Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 151.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Dr. Herbert Wender <drwender@aol.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.148: a paradox (?) commented (93)
[2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: two views of the paradox (73)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-09-21 10:31:13+00:00
From: Dr. Herbert Wender <drwender@aol.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.148: a paradox (?) commented
Dear Willard,
obviously I can't understand your question nor what Öyvind posted now. Allow me
to ask if I'm going wrong reflecting your problem in the following way:Shortly
before reading your post on September 18 I heard a celebration of the genius
designer Harry Beck, died just 50 years ago. His plan (if I see it right, that's
not a map) of the London Tube surely isn't a 'model of human practice' but only
a representation of lines and stations in a traffic system. Maybe modelling
human practices were an implementation including the moving units, especially
the people travelling through the town. Beck's plan woldn't be the best choice
for modelling becaus of its disproportionality. Though we can imagine a raw
simulation of all the movements between a sunday morning and evening in a
digital machine. In such a situation - is it really relevant if the machine is a
von-Neumann-like?
Herbert
Am Samstag, 21. September 2024 um 07:28:53 MESZ hat Humanist
<humanist@dhhumanist.org> Folgendes geschrieben:
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 148.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2024-09-20 14:34:18+00:00
From: Öyvind Eide <oeide@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.143: a paradox?
Dear Willard,
I am not sure this is an answer or even a comment to your questions, but as
modelling can be seen as media transformations, and adaptations and translations
can be seen the same way, maybe this parallel could bring something:
* Reflecting on a model and what it is modelling is like meditating over the
relationship between a novel and its film adaptation
* Reflecting on a model and what it is modelling is like meditating over the
relationship between Hávamál and its Finnish translation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hávamál
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1vam%C3%A1l>
This is only a relevant comparison if both the novel and the film, and both the
poem and its translation, are well known and understood.
All the best,
Øyvind
> Am 18.09.2024 um 06:12 schrieb Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>:
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 143.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2024-09-18 05:08:06+00:00
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: side by side
>
> Here's a question I am pondering and would like some help with.
>
> Much is written about modelling, a bit of it by me. But I am bothered by
> the built-in assumption that the role of the machine in this instance is
> to imitate the modelled object or process as closely as possible or
> practical. If, however, we juxtapose the computational machine as we
> know it to a human process or practice, neither to model the latter by
> the former nor to do a point-by-point comparison but to hold the two in
> mind in order to see what happens, what happens then? Where might one
> find a way to think about this situation?
>
> Comments welcome.
>
> Yours,
> WM
>
>
> --
> Willard McCarty,
> Professor emeritus, King's College London;
> Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
> www.mccarty.org.uk
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-09-22 08:11:13+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: two views of the paradox
A friend once surprised me by his remarkable determination not to see
what I've been up to all these years on Humanist. He so wanted a
well-structured argument he could hammer into the ground (this was
something he was very much better at than I am) that he took my
attempts to provoke discussion as the annoying work of an internet
troll, i.e. someone who throws a verbal brick through our digital window
then runs away. Not my intention at all, at least not the running away.
On this occasion, however, I'd like to say what I had in mind by my
paradoxical posting. Reactions, even arguments, still welcome.
The first, because we're confronted with it daily, is the notion that
the (reachable) end-point of artificial intelligence begins once the
machine can think as we do--and then goes on to do that cognitive 'it'
better, faster etc. Frustrating to me is the lack of discussion of how
different the artificial mode of being intelligent is, and the absence
of interest (as far as I can tell) in developing smart machines in that
other direction. Perhaps I am simply ignorant of the research and
engineering which are doing precisely that; if so, kindly let me know.
But still the loud public droning on will continue, of course, since it
is so good at keeping the funding flowing.
My second thought begins with my experience with photographic
juxtaposition, then meanderers off into surrealism with André Breton and
montage with Sergei Eisenstein. This leads (or is led by) the question
of what we can learn, prior to modelling, simply by juxtaposing our
smart machine to, say, a well-known and widely studied cultural
practice, looking at each through the mental lens of the other and so
noticing how strange each really is. In a review of Charles Kahn’s The
Art and Thought of Heraclitus (1979)*, the wonderful Miles Burnyeat wrote
as follows:
> There is no naming except from a particular point of view. Heraclitus
> thrusts us into the thought of a godlike perspective, by images and
> paradoxes which suggest alternatives to the boundaries of sameness
> and difference marked out by our language, in order that we may
> become aware that the particularity and partiality of the human
> perspective condition everything we say and do. This is what it means
> to become awake to the words and works of everyday life... In the
> end, the god’s eye point of view is both unwilling and willing to be
> spoken of by the name of Zeus because it is simply the human view
> made aware of itself as being the human view and no more. (Burnyeat
> [1982] 2012, 203)**
He then focuses in on the essential difficulty that is “an irreducible
part of the message” and comments: “After explanation and elucidation
have done their best, there is nothing for it but to let these memorable
sayings take effect in the psyche in their own way.”
If only he were still around. But what if one is not content with the
philosopher's "nothing for it", or perhaps better, what if we want to
realise the full impact of this "effect in the psyche"?
So, where do we go from here?
Yours,
WM
---
*Kahn, Charles H. 1979. The art and thought of Heraclitus: An
edition of the fragments with translation and commentary.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
**Burnyeat, Miles. (1982) 2012. “Message from Heraclitus”.
In Explorations in ancient and modern philosophy. Vol. II.
195-204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php
