Possible Worlds

Possible Worlds is the only films I can think of that is inspired by contemporary anglo-american analytic philosophy. It involves a man who lives in several different worlds, each a possible way the actual world might be. It is clear that everyone is in this situation, except in his case, he is aware of it, and appears also to be trying to solve the crime of his own death. How these possible worlds are there, or why he is aware of them, is not explained....exactly. But it's interesting to note the situations involved in them.

I could discuss or outline the plot, but I won't. Alot of films explore possiblities and the interaction of them, and what might happen if, and why such things might occur etc. etc. This is an excellent variation. Not silly, not gratuitous. But the informed viewer will see how 'not gratuitious' it actually is. There is something entirely different going on in this film: this is basically one long, and very intriguing, discussion  about contemporary metaphysics.

In one world, or in a dream, perhaps, the protagonist meets a man standing on a rocky beach, while two men shout slurry words at each other: 'slab', 'rock'. The watchers discuss what they two might be saying. In another world, the protagonist is dead and his brain is missing. Detectives investigate where it might have gone. A brain scientist reveals a store of brains wired into little bottles and kept stimulated by neutrients and electricity. (SPOILER: There is a suspicion that the main character is one of those brains). There is discussion about what the brains feel - e.g. a rat brain gives the same electrical response after being stimulated by the same signals that pass through  the rat when it is running through the maze. The question, then, is the rat believing she is running through a maze..?

The film is witty, strange and would be dark ...if you took it seriously. Well, you should take it seriously, to some extent, because, unlike most films about possibility, all the ideas in this are believed by at least one  group of contemporary philosophers to be true, and others to be at least possible; and the craziest are not the least true.

The strangest situations in this film are thought-experiments in current analytical use: the 'slab' men are imagined by Wittgenstein, the brain in a jar is discussed by....well, everyone after Putnam; it is also something that has very strong parallels with actual current research on rat brains (see also this article I found online, but I think radiolab would be a better source...); and the possible worlds are the domain of Lewis. These are not the many worlds of Everett, the physicist who thought many worlds could explain the measuring problem; Lewis' analysis only depends on modal logic, while Everett's depends on QM. There's no strong discussion of QM here. There's no need for quantum mechanics. Although, as a count against this, Lewis' analysis flat-out denies trans-world concrete particulars - things like you and me - i.e the protagonist and thus his ability to exist between worlds. But this might be just dramatic flavour. Can't say (does it matter?).

So, there you go. If you want a crash-course in contemporary philosophy, watch possible worlds. Then: read Wittgenstein, Putnam, Lewis, Quine, go mad...

Now, as regards time, well, there's nothing to that here...

What's out there?

The Cloud Appreciation Society
This is a fantastic site. I've not joined it even though I constantly take photos of clouds. For example, here is one from my flickr account:

I don't know why I like them so much but there's something to staring up at the sky and working out it is not an illusion: there are things up there. Just as there are stars up there. Just as there are bacteria in the upper atmosphere.

When you think of space, what do you imagine? Vast cold regions or grumpy starchy aliens with bumpy heads? The second, it has to be understood, is not real. Those are the equivalent of Marco Polo's Blemmyae, i.e., humans with faces in their chests, or the viking seamonsters at the edge of the world. What is out there? We don't know -

Wild Blue Yonder (imdb)

This science fiction film by Werner Herzog concerns two missions: the now-over and slightly disappointing attempt by Andromedeans from the planet 'Wild Blue Yonder' to settle in a new home (Earth) and the current mission to find a new home by human beings (which turns out to be Wild Blue Yonder). So....that's the story. But the story seems to be barely the point.

The film has no special effects. It has documentary footage and a grey-haired, cold-looking Brad Dourif, standing in the middle of nowhere, kicking irritably at dirt. He narrates over the stock footage as if he referring to what we are seeing: astronauts travelling through wormholes in space; exploring an alien planet and the site of an intergalactic business venture. Except....we're not. This is just stock footage.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. It's funny, especially Dourif's reaction to what he's telling us but also the interviews with mathematicians which....are they deliberate or set up?

This is what it reminded me of: when I was a kid in my garden, the tree in the corner was a landed rocket, the bird table was an ancient ruin, the bushes were where monsters lived. This film requires using your own imagination.

But I reckon some people will think it's rubbish. And I wouldn't hold it against them.

*I do not have a credit or a debit card, due to my British bank refusing to upgrade my account from basic - and this because I've only lived here, paid taxes, that sort of thing for two years. I don't want a credit card anyway. I need to study not play computer games or ski down a Slovenian slope. But a debit card would be nice, just so I don't have to take out £10 every time I want to buy a tin of tomatoes.

Humanist science fiction

So, what happens on a Friday here, in this libraries of libraries?

Nothing much.

I have been sick, however, the last week - and I took the last two days off just to get some cough-less sleep. I spent most of it knocked out, but also listening to the radio, watching a few films, and reading Doris Lessing's A Briefing before a Descent into Hell.

At one point in this book, I thought: what the hell is she on about? She's just giving me mystical nonsense rambling. I didn't know what the book was about when I started reading it and all that kept me going was that I'd read other books by her which I really liked.

Even though, there's something eerie about Lessing's books. I've not read her latest but from her reviews it sounds fascinating. It's about the origin of men - not the origin of humans, but the origins of men, when they are first born by originally women-only humans.

There's a certain strain of science-fiction/fantasy that seems to include Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut, eh....Stansilaw Lem, and maybe just maybe Iain M. Banks (if he wasn't so obsessed with making stuff up). It's uh, uhm, it's - it's ahm, it's -

Science fiction I like. Ech...no.

I really don't know what it is. Sometimes, it seems you can draw a line through several authors in terms of some undefined quality. This author has alot of what that author has, but has less than what that author has, and so on. Going back to Lessing, when I talk about a sort of eerieness, I mean a sort humanistic eerieness. And if there is a scale for such a thing, I think you can put Atwood on it, as well as Vonnegut, Lem, and Huxley. I think Banks drifts a little, and tends toward something else. His people are not ps - that's it.

By humanistic eerieness, I'm thinking of people being psychologically different but enough like us that we can feel that difference. We feel stretched by the writing.

I get that much more with Lessing than Atwood (though I think Margaret Atwood is the best living writer I can think of at the moment). Every time I read Lessing, I feel like I'm ably occupying the viewpoint of compassionate people who make me cold. But I still want to do that. I - eh, I -

Shikasta was a book by Lessing that was just lying about the house in Dungarvan when I was in college. I suppose it was Winifred's, as Lessing apparently is noted for being a feminist (why? Because she doesn't write about weddings?). I was reading Gene Wolfe for a while at the time, and really liking it -

Ah, wait - right. Okay, this is what it is about Banks vs. this lot I'm mentioning. Wolfe reminds me of it: Gene Wolfe's characters are humans living in a far off future; so, pretty much, are Banks'. Yet, for much of it, they are very familiar, very, contemporary. I feel I could talk to them, to some degree. Their technology would be different, but they would be - no no no that's not it at all.

Maybe it's that the Banks' beings are unreflective - there's a sealed aspect, a cap to their questioning, or to the potential for answers. The universe is explicable, mysterious only insomuch as the complexity of process, not in terms of the categories of things in it. In Banks, particularly, I feel at least, on having read his stuff, that a star is a star, a planet a planet, a person a person; computers are also people - his Minds - but that's like his one single trick. The idea a star would think, ech...nonsense. That's not science realfiktion.* I've found, on reading Banks, really entertaining and great stuff, but it doesn't always seem to cohere. So, the volcano ride in - that one about the suicide bomber - is very funny, and the ending of that book is bitterly touching (and viciously vengeful right after, incidentally, as if he needed to let his less developed readers come), but the.... well, the metaphysics is dull. The sublime - now that's interesting. No, it's just there. Maybe that's what I don't like about it - Banks is a sceptic and builds it into his narratives.

Something like that drove me nuts about Aasimov's foundation series: look, there's the hard sciences and then, oooh, the psychological sciences. Hmm...I suppose I just don't like the idea that things can be thought of in terms of our current (or a particular) categories of thought.

Anyway, this doesn't help at all in understanding Lessing, Atwood, Vonnegut et al. One thing about them as writers is they strive to be clear - except for the bit in Lessing when she was rambling about earth being a mote, but nevermind. But that's it! That's it! These authors are just good writers! Even if what they're saying is as implausible or obscure as other writers, they're trying to make it as clear as possible.

George Orwell wrote an absolutely brilliant paper on clarity. It's in a book I have called Identity and Anxiety. And he basically says: writers try to put words to things, and they struggle to find the right words. The struggle is to be as clear and simple as possible. If you want to be a good writer, that is what you should do. Bad writers think big words, complex sentences etc. make good writing. And then he quotes a load of academic papers, thereby taking the piss out of academia, which is always necessary.

I really like Iain M. Banks. I enjoy his books, but I suppose I feel he is doing something like that. It's not words so much as ideas or references to things. After reading several of his books, I get mainly the impression that the worlds he creates are only as big as the books. They don't stretch past them. Notably that huge thing - a Dark Wind or whatever it's called, where a fleet is invading a solar system and the people can see the lights of their engines in the heavens for decades before they arrive (which is a brilliant idea). It's got beautiful ideas with annoying characters, all of which disappear on finishing the page, as if one wakes from a dream...(perhaps that's the point).

*This is my moronic attempt to adapt the term 'realpolitik' to science fiction.