Musings on philosophy, politics, photography, and gastronomy.
For those who work in political philosophy, G.A. Cohen was a figure of intelligence, incite, and wit. Of course his work in political theory was superb, and his attempts to rescue Marxism from the ‘bullshit’ have helped me and many of my students.
Alas, I did not have the opportunity to meet Jerry. I cannot eulogize him, but I can join others and respectfully mark his passing.
I posted an image of this painting (simulacra of simulacra of simulacra if any Platonists are keeping track) back in February. I found it striking when I saw it in the National Gallery and I find it perhaps more striking now.
(To view the painting in exceptional detail, go to: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/lucas-cranach-the-elder-the-close-of-the-silver-age)
There are several motifs which pique my interest. First, is the apparent innocence (at least in terms of dress) of men, women and children in the scene. Second is the interspersion of brutal violence amongst familial leisure, and conversation. Third is the background: a perfectly developed, possibly urban (Cranach's Holy Roman Empire was the most urbanized area of Europe at the dawn of the 16th century), and sophisticated castle.
Cranach, then, tells us a story which is both subtle and subversive. Peaceful innocence, both moral and physical, are supposed to reign in Eden. In post Edenic life, according to the traditional Biblical story, Men have lost the tree of life but inherited the knowledge of good and evil and a sense of shame. These men are clearly not morally innocent, yet at the same time they have are not garbed, they feel no embarrassment about their bodies. Cranach's paradigm is not a straightforwardly Christian one. This is probably not surprising given Cranach's reference to the classical, probably Hesiod’s, 'Silver Age' in his title.
So what else does the picture convey to us. It might be that man is naturally a social animal, familial, discursive, but at the same time aggressive, prone to violence and strife. Violence is not overcome by sociability. Sociability is not the source of violence. This would seem to fit the model of the classical silver age. The human creations of Zeus were less noble than the humans of the Golden Age. They were prone to infighting, and were less physically hardy. They could not live without sinning against each other, Hesiod tells us. This seems to be a compelling mythos into which Cranach's piece might be situated. But this may still be too easy.
If the painting depicted the silver age, why call it the 'close' of that epoch? Where is Zeus, who in Hesiod’s myth annihilates the impious men of the sliver age? And if the silver age is largely agricultural and socially primitive, why include the castle in the background. Perhaps Cranach is up to something different.
The answer to this quandary is invariably speculative and no more than a supplement to the emotive impression of the work. Yet it is well worth exploring. If one thinks of the close of one age as the beginning of another, there is no reason to imagine that event in purely synchronic terms. It is perfectly possible for a close to be drawn out, diachronic. Moreover, in art, unlike life, time need not be linear or unidirectional.
Thus I take the symbolism of the painting to invoke both the causes and the consequences of the 'close' of the silver age. The violence of man is not systematic in the painting. In fact only one person is obviously aggressive. Another holds a stick, but is not clearly brandishing it in attack. The scene in the front is not clearly a descent into social anarchy.
But the violent, laconic tendencies of these relative primitives are sure to have limits. The peace of some seems innocent. While the violence of others animalistic (Martin Luther, who Cranach famously painted, would argue that some men devour others as part of their bestial nature). For a time, the peacefulness of most will outweigh the violence of some. The infrequency of a casus belli will prevent others from entertaining their more violent tendencies, but this will not prevail. In a sense, Cranach has produced an image of the state of nature, in which human's are sociable but also in which internecine strife is already germinating. The Bronze age, unlike the silver, was defined by militant, armed conflict.
Given this, the absence of Zeus from the scene continues to nag me. Why is he absent, if Cranach is portraying Hesiod’s myth? Perhaps Cranach is on the cusp of something quite interesting. Zeus, was said to have caused the destruction of Silver Age men, but Cranach is at liberty to interpret this cause. Perhaps, the aggression these men sometimes showed each other was the modus operandi of their downfall. And if this is the case, Zeus becomes something of a hands off deity.
Given my interest in Enlightenment philosophy, Zeus’ flight from the scene is remarkable. The absence of divine causes in the explanation of epochal changes in many Enlightenment narratives resembles the sense of Cranach’s painting I have alighted upon here. Is Cranach engaging in an embryonic form of speculative history? Probably not. But this painting may be indicative of changing discourse about human nature and history, which might have been meaningful for the development of Enlightenment historiography.
I’m rapidly catching up with my back log of photographs. I have now finished editing pictures from the honeymoon trip Ahreum and I took in Jeju Island. Jeju in spring felt like an entirely different island from that we traversed in summer 2007. The first shoots of green and early floral blossoms contrasted with the black basalt bedrock of the island. The skies were brooding and contemplative at times yet radiantly sunny at others. Ahreum and I had a remarkable, if short, honeymoon there. We were saving up traveling time for our summer trip to America.
Here are a few photos (there are more on my Flickr account at : http://www.flickr.com/photos/elrohil/page1/)
Note: What follows is speculative musing rather than reflective, considered judgment.
What does it mean to be self-reflective? What is the epistemological status of data? What do data have to do with our self-knowledge? Can there be quantifiable facts about self-hood? These questions make us think about what our self is and whether it has different aspects. They also make us think about what knowledge is like and what kinds or types of knowledge we might have.
Now one might wonder why these sorts of questions might be important. Philosophers, who are easily distraught by categorical confusions, false dichotomies and uncritical first principles, probably get a kind of perverse pleasure from finding these questions unanswered – I know I do. But, in the great ancient tradition of philosophy, why does this matter for living. These questions might not matter at all, but when people propose to be self-reflective about their lives, and when they want to find deeper meaning to life, these questions, perhaps, ought to be far more pressing. I found them both relevant and unaddressed in a recent post on the Good/Blog, “The Quantified Self: You Are Your Data” (http://www.good.is/?p=15247).
In the post, David Pescovitz tells us about a recent phenomena of self-improvement and self-knowledge – the quantified self. As Pescovitz puts, it a quantified self (Q.S. for short) is:
a person who embraces the technology at hand … for deep self surveillance and analysis. A growing number of individuals are using new sensors, social networks, online data repositories, open-access science journals, and sheer discipline to view their bodies, minds, and spirits through the lens of data.
Thus, the Q.S. seems to be about more than recording data about oneself for instrumental means. However nuanced or fine grained, I might record things like my daily eating habits (today, a salad, three espressos, duck a la orange, a second salad, pheasant stew, I lie about the desert and cheese) for dieting purposes. Exponents of the Q.S. want to record this kind of data, but they also seem to embrace a way of living or self-reflection through, in or by way of raw data. Some may even identify their lives with self-quantification. This means they must think about themselves in a certain way. Do they think themselves bundles of data, or do they think data reveal something fundamental about themselves. Why would the self be measurable, is there an intuitive mind/world or mind/body dualism that needs rejecting to support these views?
Now curious, I pressed on through Pescovitz review of the movement. Its vanguard seems to be two companion websites, the Quantified Self Wiki and The Quantified Self blog. From these sources Pescovitz draws out a veritable font of wisdom:
“Unless something can be measured, it cannot be improved,” [Kevin] Kelly wrote on the Quantified Self blog. “So we are on a quest to collect as many personal tools that will assist us in quantifiable measurement of ourselves. We welcome tools that help us see and understand bodies and minds so that we can figure out what humans are here for.”
Further:
Now, as [Gary] Wolf [contributor at the wiki] has pointed out, the level of self-knowledge he and his Quantified Self kinfolk seek isn’t for everyone. The Quantified Self is a spectrum, and it’s up to you to find your own place within its potential.
The notion of a self as a spectrum is interesting, what makes a self-like a spectrum? If a self is a spectrum, how can I find my place within it? What kind of potential might this entail? Is this a spectrum of potentialities, rather than actualities, that have been quantified or does the spectrum entail some further potential – deeper self knowledge or self improvement, or perhaps knowledge of the purpose of humans. Perhaps because I do moral philosophy, I find these questions pivotal. Why should I dedicate my life to self-measurement if I haven’t really thought about whether this is meaningful. But, at least on Pescovitz’s retelling, the Q.S. advocates seem to elide these deeper questions.
To be fair, Pescovitz may make the Quantified Self (Q.S. for short) movement seem more absurd than it actually is. Although I think Pescovitz gets them about right, it is both interesting and fair to quote more fully from Kelly’s Quantified Self blog:
The central question of the coming century is Who Are We? What is a human? What does it mean to be a person? Is human nature fixed? Sacred? Infinitely expandable? And in the meantime, how do I get through all my email? Or live to be 100.
We believe that the answers to these cosmic questions will be found in the personal. Real change will happen in individuals as they work through self-knowledge. Self-knowledge of one's body, mind and spirit. Many seek this self-knowledge and we embrace all paths to it. However the particular untrodden path we have chosen to explore here is a rational one: Unless something can be measured, it cannot be improved. So we are on a quest to collect as many personal tools that will assist us in quantifiable measurement of ourselves. We welcome tools that help us see and understand bodies and minds so that we can figure out what humans are here for. Suggested categories include:
Chemical Body Load Counts
Personal Genome Sequencing
Lifelogging
Self Experimentation
Risks/Legal Rights/Duties
Behavior monitoring
Location tracking
Non-invasive Probes
Digitizing Body Info
Sharing Health Records
Psychological Self-Assesments
Medical Self-Diagnostics
These people really are into self-measurement. So much so that while Kelly ostensibly embraces all means of self-discovery, he actually excludes all but his favoured approach – the only things that can be improved must be those which are quantifiable. This is why, I think, Pescovitz does not misrepresent Kelly’s position. But if this is his position, there are several problems. I fail to see the exclusive connection between the measurable and the improvable. I could, for example become obsessed with my own DNA. Thanks to modern science I probably arrange to have this measured, in a strange sense. More precisely I can have my DNA code recorded, though it is not really a quantity. But to what effect? I cannot change my genome, it cannot be improved. In so far as it represents a deeper me or is a deeper me, it seems a static me. In this case the measurable cannot be improved.
Similarly, I can measure my happiness and my anger. Again, this is a peculiar use of the term measure, but it does make sense. I can record how many times I was happy and I can record how many times I was angry. I can add all other kinds of emotions to my log. Through experience, I can probably qualitatively say that I was more angry when an article of mine was rejected than when a colleague gets the last piece of duck a la orange at lunch. I put this in the log too. But if I fly into a fit of rage over the lost duck, I may subsequently think I have an anger management problem. Did I come to this conclusion because of my self measurement, perhaps, but I think this, at best, is trivial. Here’s why. To think my anger management insufficient, I would have to think I get angry too often or disproportionately. How is it that measurements or recordings about myself can tell me this? I may use the data to confirm or to identify that I get angry inopportunely, but my criteria of inopportune anger are not derived from the data about my behaviour. Indeed, were I not meticulously recording each occurrence of anger – some perfectly justified – I could come to the same conclusion. I could feel guilt for berating my colleague about the duck I hungered for, my colleagues could put me on notice, or even have me fired for such an outburst. Many other possibilities are imaginable. But these phenomena aren’t like data and they aren’t like quantities.
Thus, Kelly’s notion that improvement and measurement are inextricable seems illogical. Obvious blind leaps of logic and explanation aside, the Q.C movement is inattentive to or naive toward those longstanding philosophical issues I mentioned above. Boiling down the epistemological and ontological position of the Q.S. movement, it seems to be the case that raw data is inherently meaningful, that human life can be reduced to a number of sets of data or can be made most meaningful if it is taken to consist of or be revealed by raw data, and that raw data provides meaningful solutions to questions about the real nature of human life and the actualisation of human potential. Whew.
I am oblivious to how the Q.S. method is supposed to tell us what we are here for, or what our particular purpose, or good might be. Should not Kelly discuss, at least, the possibility of a categorical distinction between facts and purposes? Should he not tell us, at least, how facts reveal purposes or how facts constitute purposes in the way he asserts?
This position also misses the sense in which data must be collected, organised and prioritised upon principles that are independent, or at least not entirely dependent, of those data. It is a tautological point, but meaning must must be given to this data if it is to matter for us. But from whence does this meaning arises? If I am right, the very answers which the Q.S. position hopes to obtain by way of deep or refined self-observation, must already be implicit or presupposed in their methodological position. In order to find truth in data, so to speak, they must already take their lives to be, essentially, data like.
Why these philosophical issues remain implicit, it is impossible to know. Perhaps this reflects a poverty of self-reflectivity amongst, a certain set of, apparently, well educated people. To take mere data to constitute or shed light on a dynamic, creative, rational and end pursuing being like man is, I think rather peculiar. The way in which they pursue increasingly variegated and fine grained data about themselves should be dissatisfying because it simply cannot really apprehend the deep and meaningful questions they want to answer. It looks almost like they are trapped in a false consciousness.
Hegel always believed the dialectical contradictions of most intellectual or moral outlooks also reveal further truths. This seems to be the case for the Q.S. movement. For the very fact that the observation of data is made central to the Q.S. movement – almost to the point of obsession – is predicated upon there being an observer/interpreter. Their practice belies their own epistemological and ontological commitments. As a matter of fact, data do not interpret themselves. Here is where the Q.S pheonomena gets interesting again. Although they aim to gain personal and particular knowledge of themselves, the interpretation of their personal data is referred to wider, inter-subjective judgments. Indeed, Q.S. devotees use social networking services on the internet to publicise their own personal data sets and invite collaborative commentary from others. This practice contradicts their data-centred epistemology – interpretation is actually more weighty than data. But it also demonstrates something else they seem to have overlooked about the self: man is a social being, and reaches out to find and discover himself in his social settings. Man’s individuality is not subsumed in this process, but confirmed and determined. Thus, philosophical contradictions sometimes reveal the most interesting anthropological truths.
Ben
On Friday the 30th of January my long PhD journey reached its ultimate phase. I submitted my thesis. All that remains now is my viva voce examination and any subsequent corrections. At the time, I felt a sweet lightness of being. My PhD colleagues in Exeter were superbly supportive, from those I’ve only met this year to long-suffering fellow pilgrims.
Reflecting on this is emotional and bittersweet. The years of my PhD have been most precious to me. I fell in love with Ahreum, and never could a better companion be found for the vicissitudes of life. I found a path in the world and found an object of my intellectual and creative capacities that has been truly meaningful. I met many dear friends. In brief, I’ve been extremely fortunate to lead an intellectually, emotionally and spiritually engaging life.
However, my PhD also marks the end of nearly 23 strait years of education. I have been a student at one institution or another for nearly my entire life. Sometimes this has been mind numbing and sometimes exhilarating. But, being a student has been a constitutive part of my identity for much of this time. And at university and graduate school it is a part of me that I have self-consciously taken up as my own mantel. This part of my life is rapidly coming to a close.
Of course, I will remain a student in the sense of the word that matters most. My studiousness and curiosity are not effaced because I am no longer a student in the normal sense; rather, they will become marks of my academic profession. I eagerly await embarking on a new research project and teaching new subjects. As part of this, I anticipate the changing responsibilities, relationships, frustrations and rewards that come with a professional career.
Consoling as this is, I cannot take the end of my PhD to be anything else than the close of several chapters of my life. The period of limbo between now and my viva is one for reflection on these changes.
Finally, for all of you, my friends and relatives, who have supported me along the way, I offer my most humble thanks.
Ben
