14 ideas
| 4741 | A very powerful computer might have its operations restricted by the addition of consciousness [Clark,T] |
| Full Idea: It seems possible that if a powerful multi-tasking computer was then given consciousness, this might restrict its operations instead of enhancing them. | |
| From: Tom Clark (talk [2003]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A nice thought, because it challenges the usual view - that consciousness brings huge intellectual liberty to a mind, and that a mind without it is necessarily restricted. Maybe consciousness is a bottleneck. |
| 22687 | Maybe literary assessment is evaluating the artist as a suitable friend [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: An approach in Hume (elaborated by Wayne Booth) holds that literary assessment is akin to an act of befriending, for one assesses the author of a work as a suitable friend. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Some') | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that art exploits our normal range of social emotions and attitudes, so I think this has some truth, but some of the best artists are so out of my league as to not even be candidates for friendship. Dostoevsky? Webster? Caravaggio? |
| 22686 | Formalists say aesthetics concerns types of beauty, or unity, complexity and intensity [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: The formal objects which individuate the aesthetic attitude may be narrowly aesthetic, as beauty, and its subspecies, such as grace and elegance, or more broadly by other formalist criteria, such as Beardley's unity, complexity and intensity. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Objections 1') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about unity or complexity, but intensity was endorsed by Henry James. Intensity doesn't sound very 'formal'. 'Beauty' doesn't seem the right word for the wonderful 'King Lear', or even for Jane Austen novels. |
| 22690 | 'Moralism' says all aesthetic merits are moral merits [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: The view that the only aesthetic merit of works are ethical ones is known as 'moralism'. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], n 1) | |
| A reaction: [He says this view was demolished by R.W.Beardsmore in 1971] Gaut contrasts this with his own carefully modulated 'ethicism'. Moralism predominated in the eighteenth century, but now looks clearly wrong (or naïve). |
| 22684 | Good ethics counts towards aesthetic merit, and bad ethics counts against it [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: I defend 'ethicism', which says that ethically admirable attitudes count toward the the aesthetic merit of a work, and ethically reprehensible attitudes count against its aesthetic merit. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Ethicism') | |
| A reaction: He recognises that morally admirable works can explore unethical behaviour, and also that identifying the 'attitude' of a work is not simple. The ethics are not necessary. 'Triumph of the Will' is a classic test case. I disagree with Gaut. |
| 22689 | If we don't respond ethically in the way a work prescribes, that is an aesthetic failure [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: Our having reason not to respond in the way prescribed (because it is unethical) is a failure of the work …so that is an aesthetic failure, which is an aesthetic defect. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Merited') | |
| A reaction: A key argument for Gaut's theory of 'ethicism' about literature. If 'Triumph of the Will' gets the right response from Nazi sympathisers, that is probably all aesthetic success. Jane Austen hasn't failed if she is rejected as bourgeois. |
| 22685 | Good art does not necessarily improve people (any more than good advice does) [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: Ethicism does not entail the causal thesis that good art ethically improves people, …any more than it follows that earnest ethical advice improves people. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Ethicism') | |
| A reaction: How successful were sermons, in the great days of Christianity? It seems hard to disagree with Gaut's point. |
| 24162 | Planck introduced the idea that energy can be quantized [Baggott] |
| Full Idea: By deriving his radiation law, Planck had inadvertently introduced the idea that energy itself could be 'quantized'. | |
| From: Jim Baggott (The Quantum Story: 40 moments [2011], 01) | |
| A reaction: He earlier assumed energy is continuously variable. I presume this means that the older idea of energy is now subsumed into the concept of fields, which are quantized into particles. The powers of nature are found in the fields. |
| 21731 | Fields can be 'scalar', or 'vector', or 'tensor', or 'spinor' [Baggott] |
| Full Idea: Fields can be 'scalar', with no particular direction (pointing, but not pushing or pulling); or 'vector', with a direction (like magnetism, or Newtonian gravity); or 'tensor' (needing further parameters); or 'spinor' (depending on spin orientation). | |
| From: Jim Baggott (Farewell to Reality: fairytale physics [2013], 2 'Quantum') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] So the question is, why do they differ? What is it in the nature of each field the result in a distinctive directional feature? |
| 21730 | A 'field' is a property with a magnitude, distributed across all of space and time [Baggott] |
| Full Idea: A 'field' is defined in terms of the magnitude of some physical property distributed over every point in time and space. | |
| From: Jim Baggott (Farewell to Reality: fairytale physics [2013], 2 'Quantum') | |
| A reaction: If it involves a 'property', normal usage entails that there is some entity which possesses the property. So what's the entity? Eh? Eh? You don't know! Disappointed... |
| 24163 | Free electrons have clouds of virtual particles, arising from field interaction [Baggott] |
| Full Idea: A free electron doesn't simply persist as a point particle travelling along a predetermined, classical path; it is surrounded by a swarm of virtual particles arsising from self-interactions with its own magnetic field. | |
| From: Jim Baggott (The Quantum Story: 40 moments [2011], 19) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me important for amateurs and mere philosophers to hang on to this idea of virtual particles, because they undermine any attempt to impose a macro picture on sub-atomic events. |
| 24161 | Thermodynamics sees nature as a continuous flow of energy, as radiation and as substance [Baggott] |
| Full Idea: Thermodynamics reinforced a vision of nature as one of harmonious flow. Energy, which could be neither created nor destroyed, flowed continuously between radiation and material substance, in themselves unbroken continua. | |
| From: Jim Baggott (The Quantum Story: 40 moments [2011], 01) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, Einstein's Special Relativity e = mc2 seems to endorse this view, by equation energy and mass. I've always wanted to know what energy is, but no one seems to know. |
| 21732 | The current standard model requires 61 particles [Baggott] |
| Full Idea: The current model requires 61 particles: three generations of two leptons and two flavours of quark, in three different colours (making 24); the anti-particles of all of these (48); 12 force particles (photon, W1, Z0, 8 gluons), and a Higgs boson. | |
| From: Jim Baggott (Farewell to Reality: fairytale physics [2013], 6 n) |
| 24160 | Particle measurements don't seem to reflect their reality [Baggott] |
| Full Idea: It seems that we can no longer assume that the particle properties we measure necessarily reflect or represent the properties of the particles as they really are. | |
| From: Jim Baggott (The Quantum Story: 40 moments [2011], Pref) | |
| A reaction: [He cites a 2006 experiment] This gives an interesting response to the Copenhagen Interpretation - that observers appear to be creating the reality they observe, because they only have 'observations', with no reality to correspond to them. I like it. |