Dissolving dualitiesin

mind, music and mechanism

Meurig Beynon

Computer ScienceUniversity 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”

Duality in mind …

experience as “mere consciousness”… experience as offering content

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’

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

Var III – Poco Allegro

Var XIII – Vivace

Var XXII – Allegro molto

Theme - Vivace

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

Empirical Modellingis to

conventional programming

AS

recreational walking is to

space age transport

In the classical theory of computing

focus on goal of computationoptimisation to purpose and functionfoundation in formal languagetheory-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 …

- openness to interpretation beyond what is explicitly and intentionally expressed …

… the content of Jug A now exceeds its capacity

… but Jug A is not deemed to be full

]

- power of experience to make association

Marrying two previously unrelated things ...

… making unexpected relationships

‘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 primarycf. 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?