dissolving dualities in mind, music and mechanism meurig beynon computer science university of...
TRANSCRIPT
Dissolving dualitiesin
mind, music and mechanism
Meurig Beynon
Computer Science
University of Warwick
Outline of talk
dualities in mind, machine and music
perspectives on these dualities
Empirical Modelling
dissolving dualities
Dualities in mind, music and machine
experience as “mere consciousness”… experience as offering content
music as formal pattern… music as affective experience
computation as an abstract mechanism… computation as effecting meaningful change
perceived as content-free, formal
… content-laden, hermeneutic in character
experience as encompassing consciousness… experience as offering content
music as formal pattern… music as affective experience
computation as an abstract mechanism… computation as effecting meaningful change
Duality in music
To what extent
is composition building formal structures?
is performance literally interpreting notes?
is musical analysis a scientific process?
cf. Mahler’s dictum:
“the best in music is not in the notes”
William James: Does Consciousness Exist?
[One philosophical position] supposes that consciousness is one element, moment, factor - call it what you like - of an experience of essentially dualistic inner constitution, from which, if you abstract the content, the consciousness will remain revealed to its own eye.
... the usual view is that by mental subtraction we can separate the two factors of experience ... - not isolating them entirely, but distinguishing them enough to know that they are two.
William James on Consciousness
Experience, I believe, has no such inner duplicity; and the separation of it into consciousness and content comes, not by way of subtraction, but by way of addition - the addition, to a given concrete piece of it, of other sets of experiences, in connection with which severally its use or function may be of two different kinds.
Duality in computing
computation as an abstract mechanism
… computation as effecting meaningful change
Duality in a computational context
Turing: interpret the input-output relation
… an abstract formal interpretation
meaning of a program is more than this …
… Brian Cantwell-Smith ‘process semantics’
Musical work vs computer program
state-as-experienced not just “input-output” behaviour cf. harmony, melody, form
music as experienced not merely executedmusic as both experienced and executed
semantic associations exceptionally rich and context-dependent cf. Diabelli variations – decorated, minimalist, quoting Don Giovanni
William James: Radical Empiricism (1910)
The primacy of conjunction in experience
The irreducibility of such conjunction
cf. philosophical attitudes that invoke the transcendent to restore conjunction
traditional empiricism focuses on disjunction
Edelman on “Jamesian properties”
Consciousness is a form of awareness that:
… is continuous but continually changing
… is private
… has intentionality
… does not exhaust the properties of its objects.
Edelman on consciousness
“computer and machine models of the brain and mind do not work”
… need “an alternative organising principle”
C and C´ respectively designate a conscious process and its underlying neural activity
Edelman on causalityC designates a conscious process
C´ designates its underlying neural activity
C as the phenomenal transform of C´
C is dependent as a psychological state on a physical state C´ that is causal ...
… reentry as the basis for spatiotemporal correlation
The dualist view of the relationship between mechanism and mind in classical computer science doesn’t do justice to musical meanings
This motivates an alternative perspective on how formal and hermeneutic perspectives on mechanism can be related …
Computing for the humanities …
Willard McCarty on plurality of modelling …analogyexperimentsimulationmapdiagramrepresentation ...
Humanities Computing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
Demanding a more liberal interpretative framework than computational science offers …
Polanyi: The analysis of a skilful feat in terms of its constituent motions remains always incomplete … [cf.] the distinctive touch of a pianist … common experience shows that no skill can be acquired by learning its constituent motions separately …
Knowing and Being (Mind, 1961)
… but also need to admit subjectivity, ambiguity and negotiation of meaning …
cf. Polanyi’s observation that:
The true meaning of the heliocentric system was discovered only by Newton, but it was anticipated 140 years earlier by Copernicus.
Empirical Modelling as a foundation for Humanities Computing …?
Extensive research into an alternative approach to computing called Empirical Modelling (EM)
Empirical Modelling views computing as the construction of artefacts resembling the works of art and music, and the construals of scholars of the humanities and experimental scientists
In the classical theory of computing
focus on goal of computation
optimisation to purpose and function
foundation in formal language
theory-laden conception of science
A JUGS program
• input-output relations associated with menu options
• use cases – can fill, empty, pour from jugs
• content cannot exceed capacity
• the only state changes are those accessible via options
An extract from the ‘JUGS’ program, as programmed for the BBC microcomputer by Robin Bartlett on August 26th 1982
procedures
subroutines
assignment
transfer of control
iteration
alternation
input-output statements
Modelling with definitions
express the current status and state of a model by a family of definitions
definitions model dependencies - conjunctive relations given in experience
cf. definitions in cells of a spreadsheet: semantics unfolds in interaction over time
Dependencies in the JUGS model
finish is ((contentA==target) ||
(contentB==target)) &&
!updating;
finish depends oncontentA, contentB,
target, updating;
valid5 ‘can perform a pour action’
valid7 ‘can pour from B to A’ hence: “A not full and B not empty”
valid7 is valid1 && valid4;
valid6 ‘can pour from A to B’
valid5 is valid6 || valid7;
The phenomenological aspect …
… your precious draft / your previous draft
… romantic / semantic web
… ape’s ‘water bird’ for swan
… liberates a different kind of engagement with sense-making …
‘Start with the specific, the small … not the abstract and general, but horribly particular’
‘marrying two previously unrelated things’
[Don Paterson, The Dark Art of Poetry]
Arcana in Empirical Modelling …
%eden/* connect the keyboard with the jugs model */
keyboard is mkinterval(contentA, contentB);
/* make jugs resemble strings */widthA is widthstr;widthB is widthstr;widthstr is 2;widthstr is 1;capA = 12;capB = 12;
%scout# put the jugs / G&D string model to the L, and further down screenbase = {2.c, 16.r};
%eden/* make the strings represent G and D on the keyboard */keyboard is mkinterval(contentA+19, contentB+26);
/* display the triads to which the current pair of notes belongs */targ = "";totstat is str(tail(view1));
Empirical Modelling as it relates to music
the phenomenological is primary
cf. William James’s attitude to the ‘life-world’
validation is in personal experience
music / humanities computing as concerned with how one experience knows another
… and to dissolving dualities …
plurality through “classification of experience”:
“subjectivity and objectivity are affairs not of what an experience is aboriginally made of, but of its classification” [William James]
… likewiseconscious / automatic in performance
formal / hermeneutic in composition etc
For more background:
http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/modelling/
http://empublic.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/projects/
kaleidoscopeBeynon2005/posters/erlkonigPoster.pdf
Beynon, Russ and McCarty, Human Computing: Modelling with Meaning, Literary and Linguistic Computing [to appear]
Beynon, Radical Empiricism, Empirical Modelling and the nature of knowing, Journal of Pragmatics & Cognition 2005
James’s Radical Empiricism
… the first great pitfall from which [RE] will save us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known …… all the while, in the very bosom of the finite experience, every conjunction required to make the relation intelligible is given in full
Why insist that knowing is a static relation out of time when it practically seems so much a function of our active life?