Category Archives: Philosophy

Loughner’s wordplay

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I have to confess, as I read through some descriptions of the mental state of Arizona assassin Jared Loughner, I see some parallels between his thoughts and mine. For instance, take this passage.

“By the time he was 19 or 20, he was really fascinated with semantics and how the world is really nothing—illusion,” Tierney says.

I think everyone’s picked up that Loughner had some strange fascination with words and grammar. And I find myself contemplating certain themes when thinking about language and the mind. We tend to think of words as being absolute descriptions of something — “this is a bird!, This is a frog!, this is a shovel!” — with no gray areas. Words are markedly useful tools for describing the world around us, but they’re not absolute. When is a glass not a cup? When is a bush not a shrub? There may well be answers to these questions — that’s what the whole discipline of semantics is about — but I don’t know them.

Ludvig Wittgenstein made a similar point while trying to define what a “game” is. We call Scrabble a game, and poker, and we also have the Olympic Games. What do they have in common? You might say you play games against other people, but you can play solitaire. How can football and Scrabble fall into the same category?

A similar point has been made in regards to terms for colors. Take a look at this color range. As everyone knows, colors gradually morph into other colors, like in a rainbow. Red morphs into orange which morphs into yellow which morphs into green etc. As humans, we’ve somewhat arbitrarily drawn lines at certain points of these gradations and assigned everything within those barriers to a certain label. Everything from orange-ish yellow to greenish yellow is considered yellow. Of course, orange-ish yellow is actually closer on the color spectrum to orange than it is to greenish yellow, yet we refer to all gradations of yellow as yellow.

This might seem like pointless semantics when discussing things like cups or bushes or colors. But what about concepts like “justice” or “consciousness” or “legality?” If we’re not absolutely clear on what we’re talking about in those cases — and we seldom are — we’re in trouble.

How can this kind of deconstruction of semantics lead someone to shoot people? Well, I don’t get it either, but consider this.

Tierney, who’s also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He’s unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner “might have gone to some other rallies,” he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: “He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, ‘What is government if words have no meaning?'”

Of course, complaints about grammatical obfuscations on the part of the government are commonplace and understandable. Have you ever tried to read the tax code? What does “collateral damage” really mean? But government words are the law of the land — if you misunderstand them, you can end up in jail. Suddenly esoteric discussions about semantics take on added gravity.

You can see how, if you think this through, the only logical thing to do is shoot your congressperson.

Ape logic

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I’ve been greatly enjoying an interesting video lecture series by Robert Sapolsky on the biological origins of behavior. (10 years ago, my nights were spent banging strippers and snorting crystal meth off their boobs, now I enjoy video lecture series.)

In a segment I watched recently, Sapolsky described some interesting behavior on the parts of gorillas (or baboons, or some other kind of ape.) These apes live in a kind of harem culture where there’s one boss ape and he gets to have sex with all the chicks, while the other apes have to go jerk off in the forest. However, every couple years or so, a younger, tougher ape, will dethrone the top ape, and then this new ape gets all the women. And what does he do then? He kills all the infants sired by the previous ape. Why? Because these infants are nursing, and as a result, their mothers can’t get pregnant. If this ape seeks to pass on his genes, he needs to make sure that the apes he rapes (hey — that’s poetry!) can be impregnated. Thus his behavior — infanticide — is programmed by the demands of natural selection (e.g. apes that kill the babies of nursing mothers and then have sex with them will pass on their genes, the ones that don’t, won’t.)

That kind of explains the genetic programming, but I’m curious what the ape is actually thinking. It seems unlikely he’s thinking, “nursing mothers can’t get pregnant, so I better kill off their babies.” (I’m not sure I was even aware that nursing mothers can’t get pregnant until watching the video, and I’m a pretty smart ape.) But I also doubt he’s just filled with some robotic urge like “must… kill… infants…” Natural selection may explain the behavior, but how does the ape experience the behavior?

And this raises the rather obvious question: To what degree are we humans subject to these biological urges? Let’s say you find that your wife is sleeping with you. You get pissed off, maybe you kill her (paging OJ Simpson.) You might say your anger is justified, but why? So she slept around… who cares? Are you merely sensing a biological directive and then confabulating a rationale for your behavior? And if humans do that, are apes essentially doing the same thing in their heads — coming up with an excuse to kill the kids? (“These babies are ugly!”)

Why?

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I was visiting with an old friend of mine several months back. He now has a couple kids, including a daughter around three or four who had entered the exasperating stage of constantly asking the question, “why?” She would see a police officer arresting someone on a television show, and ask “why?” You might state that the person being arrested head stolen a loaf of bread. She would reply, “why?” You might proffer a theory that the person being arrested was out of work because of the recession. She would ask, “why?” You would explain that jobs become scarce during an economic downturn. She would ask, “why?”

I was reflecting on this experience, and it struck me that out of the classic quintet of who, what, where, how and why, why is the most philosophically sophisticated — it really gets to the core of man’s desire to explain the universe. What is that? It’s a sandwich — no further questions are needed. Where is daddy? He’s in the bedroom, case closed. But “why?” can never really be answered. From the primitive tribal savage who invents a god of weather to the modern philosopher who applies pretzel logic to argue for moral absolutes embedded in the universe… each is attempting (and failing) to answer “why?”

Towards the end of my visit, my friend’s daughter asked “why?” once again. I replied, “There is no answer why. We live in a rudderless, morally blank universe devoid of any meaningful cause. You may grow to adulthood, find love, have children, but ultimately it will all be meaningless. Eventually you will grow old and die, and your flesh and bones will turn to dust and absorbed into the cold, inky black, infinite night.”

“Why?” she replied.

The emotional state of the audience

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As everyone across the world knows, I do a lot of song writing and recording. As a result, I spend A LOT of time sitting around listening to works in progress and trying to figure out what needs to be changed, what’s working, what’s not etc. What can be surprising is the disparity of reactions I can have to my own work. Sometimes I’ll listen to a rough mix and think it’s pure genius, other times I’ll think it’s pure dreck. The same can be said for a piece of writing or other artistic pursuits. But this seems strange. It’s the same piece of music or text. Shouldn’t my reaction be the same every time?

Of course, music does not exist by itself; it requires an audience. So, if the music isn’t changing, I have to conclude that I am changing between listens. By this, I mean my general emotional state is changing. And it’s true that if I’m riding a coffee or alcohol high (or even heroin, OxyContin or lighter fluid high) I tend to think my work is genius. And when I’m in a more sedate mode, my opinion is more critical (this isn’t always the case; sometimes I have the inverse reaction.) So the question becomes, which is the correct interpretation? One would think that being sober would apply to more “sober” appraisal. But I could argue that when I’m in an elevated emotional state, I’m more responsive to the emotional aspects of the music, and willing to overlook rather meaningless flaws.

Ultimately, when I’m doing these critiques, I’m trying to listen to the music from the point of view of the likely listener. I’m trying to listen with “their” ears. But how can I predict their state of mind? For all I know, they don’t even like me, and their view is colored by their jealousy of my massive accomplishments compared to their utterly meaningless existence. And the opposite could be true: everyone knows that their grandmother’s opinion of their work is not as meaningful as an art critic or writing agent.

I believe there are some eclectic artists who have even commanded their audience to ingest drugs or meditate before observing a piece of art. This is, of course, rather kooky, but it at least recognizes that the emotional state of the audience will color their view of the work.

And, this doesn’t even get into the topic of your emotional state while CREATING art.

Are catalogers crazy?

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I’ve noticed among a few people I know an intense interest in what I would call cataloging. This can be seen in anything from an obsession with putting things in the correct drawer, to filing data away in a very precise manner.

I myself have a certain discomfort with things being “up in the air.” If I have several incomplete items on my mental list of tasks, I experience a mild anxiety. If I’m working on a piece of writing or music and have several details not quite worked out or unanswered questions, I’m also a little upended. However, I’m not obsessive about it, and I’m fairly comfortable with vagueness.

I’m wondering if this obsession with cataloging leads to particular types of philosophical or political beliefs. Are catalogers prone to more fundamentalist ways of thinking e.g. worldviews or political philosophies which have no unanswered questions (even if the answers are clearly illogical)? Would catalogers be more likely to join some kind of religious cult? I honestly have no idea, and I doubt it’s ever been studied, but it would be interesting to find out.

Only one thing can be certain: my way is the best way.

Ids and ends

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I continue to find myself fascinated by rumination on Freud’s concept of splitting a person into two (or even three) entities. He posited the existence of the childish id, and the more adult ego/superego. (This roughly maps to neurological observations that we receive commands from both our older reptilian brain and our more evolved modern brain.)

At first it seems impossible. I’m me and there is only one of me. How can multiple people exist in my mind?

But, when you think about it, we feel contradictory ideas and emotions all the time. For instance, I was jogging today, having recently taken up the activity again, and part of me — the childish id I presume — was begging me to quit. I had to have my prefrontal cortex/egos overrule the id by screaming, “Are you a real man or some kind of dick sucking homo?!*” The child in me wanted to avoid any unpleasant sensations, but the adult in me knows that the unpleasant sensations (jogging) have benefits.

* It’s well-known that homosexuals hate to jog.

And we experience this split all the time. The part of us that wants to eat a Twinkie, and the part that feels guilty about it. The part of us that wants to drive through the line of school children blocking us from making a left turn, and the part that advises against it.

Now, if we presume that we have this id, and that it’s not happy unless it’s getting its way all the time, we face an interesting conundrum. After all, the only way one person can make his/her id happy is by infringing on other people, and their respective ids. It would seem then, that the only way for society to function would be for everyone to repress the demands of their ids to varying degrees. However, the theory then posits that repressing the id generates smoldering inner volcanoes of rage and pain. If that were the case, most people walking around would be seething, misanthropic bundles of hatred, perennially on the verge of attacking their fellow man.

Yep, sounds about right.

More thoughts on screaming obscenities at those you love

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I’ve briefly mentioned the ideas of pain doctor/author Dr. John Sarno. I’m currently reading his book “The Divided Mind” and finding it quite interesting. His theories on pain treatment are very Freudian. He posits that we have this inner child, our id, who behaves rather, well, childishly. Whenever the id feels infringed upon, justly or not, it adds to our hidden well of rage and pain.

When does the id feel this infringement? Pretty much all the time during the course of modern human existence. When your boss asks you to have the report done by the end of the day. When your parents ask you to clean out the garage. When your wife hands you a book entitled “How to Pleasure a Woman” and instructs you to read it. When your parents hand you a book entitled “How to Pleasure a Woman” and instruct you to read it (while cleaning out the garage.) Any time someone asks you to do something you don’t want to do, you feel infringed upon. And people who suffer from what John Sarno refers to as “good-ism” feel added pressure — they want to feel liked and valued.

Sarno offers the experience of road rage as an example of this subconscious volcano of anger bubbling to the surface. As someone who’s experienced road rage, this makes intuitive sense to me. Road rage does seem to come out of nowhere*, with tsunami-like velocity.

If this analysis is true, the solution is obvious. We should spend a significant portion of our day screaming obscenities and invectives at the people most involved in our daily lives — our coworkers, our family members, our close friends, our lovers. I suspect that as we watched their sobbing forms flee our presence, we would feel a great sense of inner peace.

* Technically it doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes out of some fucktarded douchebag making a left turn in front of you without even having the common human decency to signal.

The wisdom of Puff Daddy

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I woke up this morning thinking about the word “meme.” The term was invented by Richard Dawkins to describe the “idea equivalent” of a gene. Genes pass on biological and behavioral attributes — whether a person will have red hair, for example. Memes pass on what we might call cultural attributes — the idea that you should wash your hands before eating, for example.

In some cases, genes and memes may pass on complimentary information. For example, there’s a meme that’s been going around in human society for thousands of years that it’s good to be kind to your neighbor. But there’s some argument that there is a genetic incentive for that behavior as well: this explains the “good feeling” people get when they donate to charity.

Of course, genes and memes can can also work against each other.

Genes are passed on via the sex act. Sperm fertilizes an egg and, after an incubation period, a baby containing the genetic information of both parents is born. I think you can argue that memes are passed on in a similar manner. I might say to someone, “you really should visit acidlogic.com.” This is the equivalent of me depositing semen into their brain. But, for whatever reason they might be resistant to the idea. The idea does not take hold, in the same manner that the sex act usually doesn’t lead to a new life. But, in the right situation, it can take hold. My idea/semen fertilizes their mind/egg.

In the recent comedy “Get Him to the Greek,” Puff Daddy’s character talks a lot about “mind fucking.” He’s actually using it as an analogy for a different kind of behavior, but I think that could be a good way to think about the process of passing on ideas. You are symbolically fucking another person’s brain and ejaculating your idea all over their cranial walls.

Interestingly, I just mind fucked your brain with the very idea of mind fucking.

Morality without god?

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The primatologist Frans De Waal (who is quoted extensively in the “Sex at Dawn” book, by the way) has a recent editorial in the New York Times investigating one of my favorite questions: can we have morality without God? He describes altruistic/moral behavior in animals (who presumably don’t believe in God) and provides some evidence for the notion that much of our moral sense is innate. He states…

Psychologists stress the intuitive way we arrive at moral judgments while activating emotional brain areas, and economists and anthropologists have shown humanity to be far more cooperative, altruistic, and fair than predicted by self-interest models. Similarly, the latest experiments in primatology reveal that our close relatives will do each other favors even if there’s nothing in it for themselves.

As I’ve noted before, innate morality makes sense. A society where everyone does favors for each other is likely to thrive, whereas one where everyone seeks to screw each other over will likely fail. However, it should be noted that this altruism is going to be strongest within the society. You will do a favor for your neighbor, you’re less likely to do a favor for the strange man who lives two valleys away.

One might think De Waal is headed in the direction of many of the “new atheists,” arguing that society can remove God and still be moral. But at the end, he surprises you.

… what would happen if we were able to excise religion from society? I doubt that science and the naturalistic worldview could fill the void and become an inspiration for the good.

His argument here is fundamentally mine (so much so that I must presume he’s been reading my writing for years and basing much of his lucrative career on my intellectual efforts.) I don’t think we can simply look at our moral behavior, understand that it is wired into us by evolution and think no further. Moral philosophy matters. We need to be able to explain our actions in a rational manner.

Consider this: when we say humans are “wired” to be altruistic, what we are really saying is that a certain range of behaviors related to how humans interact with each other has been rewarded by the evolutionary process. However, there are behaviors that exist toward the fringes of this range. These are behaviors exhibited by people who don’t really give a damn about others; in extreme instances we call them called psychopaths. Society currently punishes psychopaths when they violate our laws. But without moral philosophy, who are we to do so? Psychopaths are simply responding to their innate “programming” in the same manner as are we. By what right can we punish them?

De Waal has a paragraph collecting similar arguments.

Echoing this view, Reverend Al Sharpton opined in a recent videotaped debate: “If there is no order to the universe, and therefore some being, some force that ordered it, then who determines what is right or wrong? There is nothing immoral if there’s nothing in charge.” Similarly, I have heard people echo Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, exclaiming that “If there is no God, I am free to rape my neighbor!”

Now, I don’t believe in God, so I’m left searching for a moral philosophy to explain why I shouldn’t rape my neighbor. I’ve yet to find one. However, I do understand that evolution has wired myself (and most people) to find the act repugnant. If I were to spy an attractive woman around the neighborhood and break into her house and threaten her with a knife, and then hear her pleas for mercy and see the tears streaming down her face I would likely feel…

Hmmmm, actually, that’s kind of turning me on.

Finally, De Waal notes a very human type of behavior in primates.

A few years ago Sarah Brosnan and I demonstrated that primates will happily perform a task for cucumber slices until they see others getting grapes, which taste so much better. The cucumber-eaters become agitated, throw down their measly veggies and go on strike. A perfectly fine food has become unpalatable as a result of seeing a companion with something better.

Humans are primates, but I presume De Waal is referring to nonhuman primates, unless he has cages of people and is feeding them grapes and cucumbers. However, the described behavior is the kind of thing we see people doing every day. They’re perfectly happy with what they’ve got, until they read about some millionaire with a goldplated swimming pool and suddenly they become miserable with their lot in life. (Though, as readers of this blog know, money doesn’t equal happiness.)

All your friends hate you

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Jaron Lanier is a well-respected computer guru who’s been in the game so long that he actually began his career at Atari. He recently wrote a book entitled “You Are Not a Gadget: a Manifesto” which challenges the direction the Internet seems to be headed in with the advent of crowdsourcing and social media like Facebook. A recent issue of The Economist (which I can’t seem to link to on the web) notes that Lanier condemns the Facebook/myspace culture as “fake friendship.”

Of course, he’s right. Who hasn’t received a friend request from a complete stranger and accepted it merely to build their friend count? However, implicit in Lanier’s statements is the idea that real friendship is something true and holy. The truth is, we seldom have real, fundamental connections with the people we personally interact with. Most of our conversations are time wasting jabbering around the water cooler in some vague attempts to fire up the social connections we know we’re supposed to have. How many times have you passed by some bored, despondent couple at a diner trying to breathe life into a relationship that has long since had the life sucked out of it?

I recall talking to a “friend” of mine at a bar or several years ago. We had both released albums around the same period, and I was asking her how hers was doing. I politely feigned interest as she rattled off her news. Then, the subject came around to my album, and I could instantly see her eyes darting across the room as if looking for someone more preferable to talk to. At that moment I had an epiphany. We are monkeys. And like monkeys, we seek to climb the primate social ladder and get as close to the alpha monkey as possible. I have never been an alpha monkey (more like a zeta monkey.) As the realization set in, her features became more apelike in her words turned to monkeylike gibberish. I said, “Take your hands off me you god damn filthy ape!” She started to cry. Then I ordered another drink.