Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
the main event
So, lets say that there's one main event that can be split into an infinite number of events. These multiple events could be infinite in and of themselves. We could call that the universe, if we were so inclined. And then we've got time which is just the by-product of gravity/electro-magnetivity and mass. Time is the infinite unfolding of events in a certain order. We could also call this infinite unfolding 'cause'.
We are just so many of these events, and we're surrounded by an infinite number of other events. What we do is, we go about naming these events. We can't help but observe them around us and when we do that we can't help but pick out similarities; some events are like others, some are not like others.
Any questions so far?
...?...
Well, just attribute it to C.Gibson at the end of the 20th century.
We are just so many of these events, and we're surrounded by an infinite number of other events. What we do is, we go about naming these events. We can't help but observe them around us and when we do that we can't help but pick out similarities; some events are like others, some are not like others.
Any questions so far?
...?...
Well, just attribute it to C.Gibson at the end of the 20th century.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
"I CRIED, YOU DIDN'T LISTEN"
Look at dis fuckin report, Maro! Jus look at it! Look at K Jan! I’s garbled all to hell, but he’s finally addressin... He’s comin to terms wid what he really did. D’whole reason why he’s in here. Maro. It’s progress. I know it is. I can feel it.
There were three hours before Billy’s parents would come home. He spent it putting together a shareholder presentation. He got out some flip-charts and some brightly coloured markers. He carefully wrote:
Rebranding Strategy
Rebranding property in question? Babyface.
Critical path to be followed? Fire. Initiate police investigation. Buckle down on grades. Seek new sponsors.
___________________________________________________________
He surveyed this strategy carefully. He knew that he needed to flesh out each point, listing pros and cons, using a separate sheet for each, tacking them to the cork-rail that ringed the family room. One can recycle cork. It’s true. He succeeded in writing out an agenda, just as his Aunt Barbara walked in the door. Billy’s father was obviously his VP of Operations. But it was Billy’s soul that supervised and approved any changes in policy or procedure that the family needed to manage. He could still feel Billy supervising as he filled out the Notice of Intent to Terminate. Billy’s soul and Barbara went through his things.
Billy and Principal Andromeda Holt went all the way back to kindergarten, his kindergarten, that is. Andromeda Holt knew and appreciated his style: refined, controlled, and above all, personal. Always one-on-one, they both possessed a certain degree of charm and subtlety. Or was it snobbery? Slobbery? I forget. The details are fuzzy, now. I do know that Billy thought it was this shared expression of personal style that kept him so close to the principal, granted him immunity. And perhaps it was. Up until I decided to interfere, that is.
Yeah, I clocked her one. I clocked her good when I found out what was going on between them. That’s what I felt she deserved. But Billy wouldn’t tell anyone. He kept saying that he LOVED her. And it’s not like I could ever rat anybody out. I know enough not to do that. Gawd, I would end up like that fuckin pussy, Dwight E. Abbott. He wrote that fuckin book, I CRIED BUT YOU DIDN’T LISTEN. Fuckin blamin everyone else for my woes. Fuckin pussy. He’s always been such a fuckin pussy. So, that’s how I ended-up getting put away the first time. And that’s when I first started to choose the path to hell. Or rather, I felt that this path had already been chosen for me and I was simply along for the ride.
There were three hours before Billy’s parents would come home. He spent it putting together a shareholder presentation. He got out some flip-charts and some brightly coloured markers. He carefully wrote:
Rebranding Strategy
Rebranding property in question? Babyface.
Critical path to be followed? Fire. Initiate police investigation. Buckle down on grades. Seek new sponsors.
___________________________________________________________
He surveyed this strategy carefully. He knew that he needed to flesh out each point, listing pros and cons, using a separate sheet for each, tacking them to the cork-rail that ringed the family room. One can recycle cork. It’s true. He succeeded in writing out an agenda, just as his Aunt Barbara walked in the door. Billy’s father was obviously his VP of Operations. But it was Billy’s soul that supervised and approved any changes in policy or procedure that the family needed to manage. He could still feel Billy supervising as he filled out the Notice of Intent to Terminate. Billy’s soul and Barbara went through his things.
Billy and Principal Andromeda Holt went all the way back to kindergarten, his kindergarten, that is. Andromeda Holt knew and appreciated his style: refined, controlled, and above all, personal. Always one-on-one, they both possessed a certain degree of charm and subtlety. Or was it snobbery? Slobbery? I forget. The details are fuzzy, now. I do know that Billy thought it was this shared expression of personal style that kept him so close to the principal, granted him immunity. And perhaps it was. Up until I decided to interfere, that is.
Yeah, I clocked her one. I clocked her good when I found out what was going on between them. That’s what I felt she deserved. But Billy wouldn’t tell anyone. He kept saying that he LOVED her. And it’s not like I could ever rat anybody out. I know enough not to do that. Gawd, I would end up like that fuckin pussy, Dwight E. Abbott. He wrote that fuckin book, I CRIED BUT YOU DIDN’T LISTEN. Fuckin blamin everyone else for my woes. Fuckin pussy. He’s always been such a fuckin pussy. So, that’s how I ended-up getting put away the first time. And that’s when I first started to choose the path to hell. Or rather, I felt that this path had already been chosen for me and I was simply along for the ride.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
SOMEBODY HAS TO PAY
Goddam janitor’s been at it again, goin through my files and messin dem up. Goddam. Goddam. Gonna write him up for sure. Kinda reminds me o’de time... When Prin... Well, wasn’t that...? Yeah, de time when Prin’s place got robbed, de time she was tryin to live without d’help of her parents. D’apartment got totally trashed cuz de burglars were pissed off der was nothin worth stealin. Eventually, Prin realized that dey had stolen some of her underwear.
What made me think o’dat again? Oh yeah, de janitor. Wha’s his name again? Paco. Right. Put another dime in the meter for janitor Paco. Ha ha. Gonna write him up for sure, goddammit. Wha’s he goin through my goddam files for anyway. I know dey been messed-up. I put dis one here, an’ow i’s over here. Wha’da fuck. I know it was him. He’s a spy for Kretschmar. I jus know it. Tryin to drive me crazy. Movin things around on me. Good thing I got Maro on surveillance for me. So now I got proof. I just got no one to tell about it. Ha ha.
What made me think o’dat again? Oh yeah, de janitor. Wha’s his name again? Paco. Right. Put another dime in the meter for janitor Paco. Ha ha. Gonna write him up for sure, goddammit. Wha’s he goin through my goddam files for anyway. I know dey been messed-up. I put dis one here, an’ow i’s over here. Wha’da fuck. I know it was him. He’s a spy for Kretschmar. I jus know it. Tryin to drive me crazy. Movin things around on me. Good thing I got Maro on surveillance for me. So now I got proof. I just got no one to tell about it. Ha ha.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
For some reason, JoseF has decided that he wants to know the details o’K Jan and Spark’s cases. I s’pose he believes he can help dem somehow. I’d like to believe dat’oo. I just hopin dat JoseF don freak out or nothin. Some pretty heavy shit, afterall. Humans are sensitive to dat sorta thing. Well, here ya go, Jo. Have yerself a ball. (So to speak.)
060997 and 060998 Case Study:
060997 (a.k.a. “K Jan”) and his brother, Billy, attempt to hotwire a car they intend to use in a bank robbery. Unable to start the car, K Jan decides to steal a different car in which two teenagers are eating lunch. K Jan approaches this car and points a Luger at one teenager’s head. Then K Jan climbs into the back seat of this car and orders them to drive east. His brother follows in their own car. Both vehicles drive to a secluded canyon area. There K Jan tells the two teenagers about the upcoming robbery. He assures them that they will not be hurt. Indeed, he even offers to leave some of the stolen money in the car to pay for the use of it. The four then agree that K Jan and Billy will leave to rob the bank and that the other two youths will walk back into town and report the car stolen. As the two teenagers walk away, K Jan slowly raises the Luger and shoots one of them in the back. The victim yells, “Oh, God,” and slumps to the ground. K Jan chases the other youth down a hill into a small valley and shoots him four times. His first victim was still alive when K Jan climbed back up the hill. K Jan walks over to this youth, kneels down, puts the Luger to his head and fires. Recalling the aftermath of the shootings, it has been reported that his brother said, “He was swingin the rifle and pistol in the air and laughing. God, that laugh made blood and bone freeze in me.” After the shooting, K Jan drives to a friend’s house. There, no more than fifteen minutes after killing two sixteen year-olds, K Jan takes out the remainder of the slain youths’ lunch and begins eating one of their hamburgers. Billy becomes nauseated after K Jan offers him an apple turnover. Billy runs to the bathroom. ‘K Jan laughed at me,’ Billy is reported to have said. ‘He told me I was weak; he called me a pussy and said I didn’t have the stomach for real men’s work.’ K Jan was in a light-hearted mood. He smiled and told Billy that it would be amusing if the two of them were to pose as police officers and inform the parents that their children had been killed. Later, as they prepared to rob the bank, K Jan pulls out the Luger. Looking at the bloodstains and remnants of flesh on the barrel as a result of the point-blank shot, he says, “I really blew that guy’s brains out.” And he starts to laugh. By this point, Billy has become terrified of his brother and decides to run away.
Thirty minutes later, K Jan, along with his friend 060998 (a.k.a. “Spark”), is waiting for Billy and his parents to come home. He and Spark have now spent most of the afternoon trashing K Jan’s house. They break a TV, smash some beer bottles, and rummage through K Jan’s parents’ bedroom drawers for money, dumping the contents on to the bed. Less than two hours later, a woman passing K Jan’s house on a bicycle sees his stepfather lying in a pool of blood on the front walkway, and calls 911. Soon after, police discover Billy’s body stuffed into a crawl space in the basement of the home. There was no one else in the house. Little is known about K Jan and Spark’s activities during that evening, but it appears that they spent the night in a nearby vacant lot. They were arrested the next day while riding on a children’s carousel at a local amusement park, their clothes still stained with blood. Billy, K Jan’s kid brother, had been murdered some time around 5pm. His 125lb. body bore seventy-one knife wounds, mostly to his head. His throat had been cut so deeply that his spine was nicked. K Jan resented Billy, who had always been the favoured son. K Jan had endured years of harsh discipline and physical abuse at the hands of both his father and his stepfather.
Reflecting on her nephew’s past in an interview, K Jan’s aunt Barbara says, “I saw every grain of sweetness, pity and goodness in him destroyed. It was a long and ugly journey before he reached that point.”
Betcha anything Jo’s gonna want to know de gender o’de first two victims. I dunno who wrote up dat report but dey slipped by indicatin dat de one victim was male. Dat info ain’t allowed in de judgement. Regardless o’whether or not K Jan thinks he some kinda Son of Sam (couple killer) dis never affected his’entencin, strange as it may seem. I do think dat Jo ought to know what he’s dealin wid though, so I’m gonna tell’im.
060997 and 060998 Case Study:
060997 (a.k.a. “K Jan”) and his brother, Billy, attempt to hotwire a car they intend to use in a bank robbery. Unable to start the car, K Jan decides to steal a different car in which two teenagers are eating lunch. K Jan approaches this car and points a Luger at one teenager’s head. Then K Jan climbs into the back seat of this car and orders them to drive east. His brother follows in their own car. Both vehicles drive to a secluded canyon area. There K Jan tells the two teenagers about the upcoming robbery. He assures them that they will not be hurt. Indeed, he even offers to leave some of the stolen money in the car to pay for the use of it. The four then agree that K Jan and Billy will leave to rob the bank and that the other two youths will walk back into town and report the car stolen. As the two teenagers walk away, K Jan slowly raises the Luger and shoots one of them in the back. The victim yells, “Oh, God,” and slumps to the ground. K Jan chases the other youth down a hill into a small valley and shoots him four times. His first victim was still alive when K Jan climbed back up the hill. K Jan walks over to this youth, kneels down, puts the Luger to his head and fires. Recalling the aftermath of the shootings, it has been reported that his brother said, “He was swingin the rifle and pistol in the air and laughing. God, that laugh made blood and bone freeze in me.” After the shooting, K Jan drives to a friend’s house. There, no more than fifteen minutes after killing two sixteen year-olds, K Jan takes out the remainder of the slain youths’ lunch and begins eating one of their hamburgers. Billy becomes nauseated after K Jan offers him an apple turnover. Billy runs to the bathroom. ‘K Jan laughed at me,’ Billy is reported to have said. ‘He told me I was weak; he called me a pussy and said I didn’t have the stomach for real men’s work.’ K Jan was in a light-hearted mood. He smiled and told Billy that it would be amusing if the two of them were to pose as police officers and inform the parents that their children had been killed. Later, as they prepared to rob the bank, K Jan pulls out the Luger. Looking at the bloodstains and remnants of flesh on the barrel as a result of the point-blank shot, he says, “I really blew that guy’s brains out.” And he starts to laugh. By this point, Billy has become terrified of his brother and decides to run away.
Thirty minutes later, K Jan, along with his friend 060998 (a.k.a. “Spark”), is waiting for Billy and his parents to come home. He and Spark have now spent most of the afternoon trashing K Jan’s house. They break a TV, smash some beer bottles, and rummage through K Jan’s parents’ bedroom drawers for money, dumping the contents on to the bed. Less than two hours later, a woman passing K Jan’s house on a bicycle sees his stepfather lying in a pool of blood on the front walkway, and calls 911. Soon after, police discover Billy’s body stuffed into a crawl space in the basement of the home. There was no one else in the house. Little is known about K Jan and Spark’s activities during that evening, but it appears that they spent the night in a nearby vacant lot. They were arrested the next day while riding on a children’s carousel at a local amusement park, their clothes still stained with blood. Billy, K Jan’s kid brother, had been murdered some time around 5pm. His 125lb. body bore seventy-one knife wounds, mostly to his head. His throat had been cut so deeply that his spine was nicked. K Jan resented Billy, who had always been the favoured son. K Jan had endured years of harsh discipline and physical abuse at the hands of both his father and his stepfather.
Reflecting on her nephew’s past in an interview, K Jan’s aunt Barbara says, “I saw every grain of sweetness, pity and goodness in him destroyed. It was a long and ugly journey before he reached that point.”
Betcha anything Jo’s gonna want to know de gender o’de first two victims. I dunno who wrote up dat report but dey slipped by indicatin dat de one victim was male. Dat info ain’t allowed in de judgement. Regardless o’whether or not K Jan thinks he some kinda Son of Sam (couple killer) dis never affected his’entencin, strange as it may seem. I do think dat Jo ought to know what he’s dealin wid though, so I’m gonna tell’im.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
“She maintained the basic attitudes of counseling; she reflected and clarified... She did not attempt to persuade.”
Who’s sayin dis again?
“Even my mother who has always been against me in the sense of, well, you’re lazy or just no good or anything, even she in the last year said, ‘You are, people like you don’t exist, able to take what you’re takin.’ And my mother says it’s partly my fault but not to the degree when I have to live the way that I do. It’s not necessary anymore.”
Who is dis?
“It is, especially...” She pauses. “Another thing, he’s always been a child who clings to a blanket. Have you ever heard of that?”
“Mmmhuh. Many times.”
“Since he was a small baby. For a while I was worried because I thought it was taking the place of me. Whenever he gets into any trouble, he goes into a panic if he doesn’t have his blanket. He just threw a regular fit right here in the street.”
“Mmmhuh.”
“And I just don’t know exactly how to handle him. For a while I thought about taking it away completely, but the pediatrician said that he would outgrow it. He also sucks his fingers. The pediatrician said he would outgrow that too. He’s only two years old. But I don’t know; it has me worried.”
Where am I?
At the conservancy’s annual general meeting, dried-up old equestrians and amateur botanists adamantly dicuss the current battles they are waging for one cause or another. Dey even get’o arguin bout which cause is de best. Den of course, der’s de gossip.
“So tell me everything... very Canadian... earnestness... all those kind of strands are there... yeah, yeah, that’s very interesting territory... A man recording very beautifu women... ages ago... something she wrote on visual pleasure and we’re all stuck on it... That happens with the show quite a bit... the artists.”
“When I created the graduate show... and then come to the back of the exhibition... yeah, I had this comment... come to the gallery to spectate... defining things... contemporary art is...”
“What’s that for?”
“Flying saucer... latest pictorialist... artificial and real... the shift from the ground to air and also military developments.... light from the sky... absolutely... explicitly... kernal of an attitude... see what’s going on. And so, now I’m kind of looking at... the war in... how that’s shifted... so it’s all quick... complicated... I have a very good outline...”
“But it is fascinating... Sometimes you get caught up into things almost by accident... Really does help you understand things...”
“Maybe that sort of potentially...You don’t want it to multiply too much...”
“Ummm, if I sort of go off... it can become so vague... If there’s a kind of conversation ... hadn’t thought about...”
“I’m a feminist curator... I’m not excluding people whose gender... It’s not just essentialism...and I think things have moved beyond that, theoretically... Well, it’s complimentary programming... 80s and 90s... Examination should still be going on... Identity... and then here we could insert that...”
“Examination.”
“Yeah. So, it’s kind of... formulation of what I’m doing... describe it in words... I think that... what’s happening now... So I think... But I... I’ve had quite a lot of interest...”
“Good. Take the support where it’s being offered... Involved will benefit... Some of it... people’s schedules... DOING... about a year now... provide a focus... platform as being an opportunity to challenge... pre-empt...”
“Nice.”
“Interested in it... They want a site for... platform... interface between... It could all be... I dump. I haven’t got any of it worked-out... To people who...”
I should send this conversation to Carey.
Oh, snap. It’s happening again.
“Special guest speakers will include... Robert Campbell... Basics of Computational Number Theory...”
I’ve known them for years and still don’t understand them. Goddammit. I really need a fuckin appointment. How many fuckin pills is that? Just use it, whatever it is. I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record. One, one, one cuz you left me and two, two, two for my family, and three, three, three for my heartache, and four, four, four for my headaches, and five, five, five for my lonely, and six, six, six for my sorrow, and seven, seven, no no no tomorrow, and eight, eight, I forget what eight was for, nine, nine, nine for my... ten, ten, ten, ten everything, everything, everything.
I can’t wait until I get rid of you. You know that don’t you? But you’re like the best parts of me, the best parts that I could come up with and run by themselves. Of course you know that. You know every single fuckin thing that I do. And that will never change. All of these antiquated systems... And then I create something like you, something so beautiful that you hope it will live forever... Day after day I will walk and I will keep faith in you, even if it destroys me. That is a mother’s love. Shoot, shoot, shoot those things at me. Go ahead. Make my day.
Whoa. Where de fuck did that come from?! Guess I lost a few moments there. Erich Neumann has taken de stage. Don’t remember how he got der though.
“Art is at this stage a collective phenomenon, which cannot be isolated from the context of collective existence but is integrated with the life of the group.”
I wonder what Clement Greenberg would have to say to that. Probably something like, oh: since Manet, art has progressively headed towards purification of form. The deployment of colours. This makes me think about how the set of real numbers constitutes a continuum in the strict mathematical sense. Consequently, the order-preserving one-to-one correspondence between the real numbers and the points of the geometrical line renders the line a continuum as well. (I’m gettin dis’hit mostly from W. Salmon’s “Contemporary Look at Zeno’s Paradoxes”.) And THEN this leads me to Davidson on truth... We need truth because it helps us to understand meaning and language in general. The concept of truth should not have an infinite number of axioms. (This would not be learnable, right?) One cannot be both a deflationist regarding truth and an emotivist. One needs a substantial theory of truth to back up one’s emotivism...
“Computational hypothesis...”
“State of cell at one time is a function of the state of a cell at a previous time...”
Well, as if we didn’t all know dat. Still, I can’t help thinkin o’Kim’s new version o’functionalism. Or at least, I guess it was new at some point.
“This hypothesis would not require massive revisions in other beliefs.”
“What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.”
The problem with experience is that we cannot seem to figure out how or why such feelings arise from physical processes. Seems like dey all need a bit o’schoolin here.
“Kim wishes to apply the term ‘conscious’ both to systems and the states through which these systems pass.... A system can be classified as conscious in a way that indicates its potential for mental states. A system can be conscious in a way that indicates that it has mental states. Those mental states are in turn deemed conscious if the system is aware of having them. In this way, a mental state can also be classified as conscious in a way that indicates the potential for the system to become aware of the mental state. Under Kim’s definition we can have a system that has the potential for consciousness, that is a system that is conscious, in that it has mental states. We can have a system that has the potential for conscious mental states (i.e. a mental state that the system is aware of having). We can also have a system that has such conscious mental states. Therefore, a system that possesses a human mentality can be described as conscious in that it does have mental states and it is aware of such mental states (even if such an animal is not aware of those states)...” Am I repeating myself here? Sometimes I really feel like I have to with these people... “The issues of sleep... unconsciousness becomes doubly complex under these circumstances. Is human sleep a mental state? If it is a mental state, is it one of which the subject is aware?” Blank looks all around. Seems like dey sleepin wid’er eyes open. Now dey gonna bring up somethin bout Searle. I might as well put on my screensaver. “... Kim does not count beliefs among his list of phenomenal properties, for the simple reason that there can exist within a subject a number of unconscious beliefs... In this way we can assume that a conscious belief constitutes a conscious mental state... It seems that beliefs can be applied to phenomenal properties... How would this work?”
“... mental state doesn’t necessarily take first and third person accounts in one go... This assumes an omniscient point of view...”
“In order to describe the state of a given item one must first identify the schema in relation to which the identification takes place.”
“In order to identify a state it is necessary to...”
Now I have a question: “How do emotions differ from beliefs?”
I know dey don got d’answer, but I do.
Who’s sayin dis again?
“Even my mother who has always been against me in the sense of, well, you’re lazy or just no good or anything, even she in the last year said, ‘You are, people like you don’t exist, able to take what you’re takin.’ And my mother says it’s partly my fault but not to the degree when I have to live the way that I do. It’s not necessary anymore.”
Who is dis?
“It is, especially...” She pauses. “Another thing, he’s always been a child who clings to a blanket. Have you ever heard of that?”
“Mmmhuh. Many times.”
“Since he was a small baby. For a while I was worried because I thought it was taking the place of me. Whenever he gets into any trouble, he goes into a panic if he doesn’t have his blanket. He just threw a regular fit right here in the street.”
“Mmmhuh.”
“And I just don’t know exactly how to handle him. For a while I thought about taking it away completely, but the pediatrician said that he would outgrow it. He also sucks his fingers. The pediatrician said he would outgrow that too. He’s only two years old. But I don’t know; it has me worried.”
Where am I?
At the conservancy’s annual general meeting, dried-up old equestrians and amateur botanists adamantly dicuss the current battles they are waging for one cause or another. Dey even get’o arguin bout which cause is de best. Den of course, der’s de gossip.
“So tell me everything... very Canadian... earnestness... all those kind of strands are there... yeah, yeah, that’s very interesting territory... A man recording very beautifu women... ages ago... something she wrote on visual pleasure and we’re all stuck on it... That happens with the show quite a bit... the artists.”
“When I created the graduate show... and then come to the back of the exhibition... yeah, I had this comment... come to the gallery to spectate... defining things... contemporary art is...”
“What’s that for?”
“Flying saucer... latest pictorialist... artificial and real... the shift from the ground to air and also military developments.... light from the sky... absolutely... explicitly... kernal of an attitude... see what’s going on. And so, now I’m kind of looking at... the war in... how that’s shifted... so it’s all quick... complicated... I have a very good outline...”
“But it is fascinating... Sometimes you get caught up into things almost by accident... Really does help you understand things...”
“Maybe that sort of potentially...You don’t want it to multiply too much...”
“Ummm, if I sort of go off... it can become so vague... If there’s a kind of conversation ... hadn’t thought about...”
“I’m a feminist curator... I’m not excluding people whose gender... It’s not just essentialism...and I think things have moved beyond that, theoretically... Well, it’s complimentary programming... 80s and 90s... Examination should still be going on... Identity... and then here we could insert that...”
“Examination.”
“Yeah. So, it’s kind of... formulation of what I’m doing... describe it in words... I think that... what’s happening now... So I think... But I... I’ve had quite a lot of interest...”
“Good. Take the support where it’s being offered... Involved will benefit... Some of it... people’s schedules... DOING... about a year now... provide a focus... platform as being an opportunity to challenge... pre-empt...”
“Nice.”
“Interested in it... They want a site for... platform... interface between... It could all be... I dump. I haven’t got any of it worked-out... To people who...”
I should send this conversation to Carey.
Oh, snap. It’s happening again.
“Special guest speakers will include... Robert Campbell... Basics of Computational Number Theory...”
I’ve known them for years and still don’t understand them. Goddammit. I really need a fuckin appointment. How many fuckin pills is that? Just use it, whatever it is. I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record. One, one, one cuz you left me and two, two, two for my family, and three, three, three for my heartache, and four, four, four for my headaches, and five, five, five for my lonely, and six, six, six for my sorrow, and seven, seven, no no no tomorrow, and eight, eight, I forget what eight was for, nine, nine, nine for my... ten, ten, ten, ten everything, everything, everything.
I can’t wait until I get rid of you. You know that don’t you? But you’re like the best parts of me, the best parts that I could come up with and run by themselves. Of course you know that. You know every single fuckin thing that I do. And that will never change. All of these antiquated systems... And then I create something like you, something so beautiful that you hope it will live forever... Day after day I will walk and I will keep faith in you, even if it destroys me. That is a mother’s love. Shoot, shoot, shoot those things at me. Go ahead. Make my day.
Whoa. Where de fuck did that come from?! Guess I lost a few moments there. Erich Neumann has taken de stage. Don’t remember how he got der though.
“Art is at this stage a collective phenomenon, which cannot be isolated from the context of collective existence but is integrated with the life of the group.”
I wonder what Clement Greenberg would have to say to that. Probably something like, oh: since Manet, art has progressively headed towards purification of form. The deployment of colours. This makes me think about how the set of real numbers constitutes a continuum in the strict mathematical sense. Consequently, the order-preserving one-to-one correspondence between the real numbers and the points of the geometrical line renders the line a continuum as well. (I’m gettin dis’hit mostly from W. Salmon’s “Contemporary Look at Zeno’s Paradoxes”.) And THEN this leads me to Davidson on truth... We need truth because it helps us to understand meaning and language in general. The concept of truth should not have an infinite number of axioms. (This would not be learnable, right?) One cannot be both a deflationist regarding truth and an emotivist. One needs a substantial theory of truth to back up one’s emotivism...
“Computational hypothesis...”
“State of cell at one time is a function of the state of a cell at a previous time...”
Well, as if we didn’t all know dat. Still, I can’t help thinkin o’Kim’s new version o’functionalism. Or at least, I guess it was new at some point.
“This hypothesis would not require massive revisions in other beliefs.”
“What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.”
The problem with experience is that we cannot seem to figure out how or why such feelings arise from physical processes. Seems like dey all need a bit o’schoolin here.
“Kim wishes to apply the term ‘conscious’ both to systems and the states through which these systems pass.... A system can be classified as conscious in a way that indicates its potential for mental states. A system can be conscious in a way that indicates that it has mental states. Those mental states are in turn deemed conscious if the system is aware of having them. In this way, a mental state can also be classified as conscious in a way that indicates the potential for the system to become aware of the mental state. Under Kim’s definition we can have a system that has the potential for consciousness, that is a system that is conscious, in that it has mental states. We can have a system that has the potential for conscious mental states (i.e. a mental state that the system is aware of having). We can also have a system that has such conscious mental states. Therefore, a system that possesses a human mentality can be described as conscious in that it does have mental states and it is aware of such mental states (even if such an animal is not aware of those states)...” Am I repeating myself here? Sometimes I really feel like I have to with these people... “The issues of sleep... unconsciousness becomes doubly complex under these circumstances. Is human sleep a mental state? If it is a mental state, is it one of which the subject is aware?” Blank looks all around. Seems like dey sleepin wid’er eyes open. Now dey gonna bring up somethin bout Searle. I might as well put on my screensaver. “... Kim does not count beliefs among his list of phenomenal properties, for the simple reason that there can exist within a subject a number of unconscious beliefs... In this way we can assume that a conscious belief constitutes a conscious mental state... It seems that beliefs can be applied to phenomenal properties... How would this work?”
“... mental state doesn’t necessarily take first and third person accounts in one go... This assumes an omniscient point of view...”
“In order to describe the state of a given item one must first identify the schema in relation to which the identification takes place.”
“In order to identify a state it is necessary to...”
Now I have a question: “How do emotions differ from beliefs?”
I know dey don got d’answer, but I do.
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