Those who, like Professor Ryle, revolt against  a dichotomy to which they have once been addicted, commonly go over to maintain that only one of the alleged pair of opposites really exists at all. And so he, though he does not believe the body is a machine, does believe that it alone, and not the ‘ghost’, exists: he preaches with the fervour of a proselyte a doctrine of “one world”. Yet what has ever been gained by this favourite philosophical pastime of counting worlds? And why does the answer always turn out to be one or two, or some similar small, well-rounded philosophically acceptable number? Why, if there are nineteen of anything, is it not philosophy?

No related posts.

Photo #5, The Fifth Day

Released in January 2009, our third data cinema work by Carlo Zanni challenges the very essence of cinema by, in fact, not being a movie clip at all but giving the impression it is. The Fifth Day is a slideshow (for lack of a more flattering comparison) heightened with an extremely cinematic soundtrack. By the latter I mean to point to the relationship between the presented photographs, their transitions and the sense of movement created by their visual aspects in conjunction with the music. The narrative suggested, as Zanni himself clarifies, is the invisible protagonist’s taxi ride across Alexandria, Egypt (Zanni, 2009b). Ten stills portray the progression across the city, with no other semblance of coherence than an overall feel of spatial cohesion and the narrative music’s bonding presence (the stills are cataloged here).

The work, however, remains exemplar of data cinema for the slideshow’s undeniable cinematic quality and, of course, its characteristic aesthetic dependence on data flux. Every still has a detail that is modified according to information gathered across the Internet. The nature of the data flux is derived, however, not only from the visitor or from an artist-installed webcam, as with The Possible Ties and My Temporary Visiting Position, but also from independent websites (such as http://apple.com/trailers, Appendix 3 Photo #9) and more elaborate processing of user data. Photo #5 is an interesting example of the latter, as the name on the shop sign changes according to the Geo IP localization of the last visitor.

The still and moving image

For the sake of an accurate description of The Fifth Day, I must admit I have prematurely taken for granted the ‘undeniable cinematic quality’ attributed to the work above. However, a look at the history of art cinema will prove the enterprise of blurring the distinction between photography and cinema has been undertaken before, and that these precedents establish a solid case for The Fifth Day’s inclusion in the cinema canon. Of notable relevance is Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), a splendid short science fiction film composed almost exclusively of stills, and therefore highly similar to Zanni’s piece (read ASN’s treatise on La Jetée here).

Photo #8, The Fifth Day

La Jetée has been met with manifold interpretations and analyses particularly concerned with the meaning of the photograph’s use in relation to cinema – a discussion that will now be transferred to The Fifth Day. As G. Uriel Onlow remarked, the stills are “profoundly cinematic” as, first of all, their very composition is inspired by cinema: the ‘bird’s eye view’ (Photo # 2, Photo #10) is alternated with ‘over the shoulder shots’ (Photo #3) and ‘optical viewpoints’ (Photo #8) (1999, p. 16).

Their combination, as Roland Barthes argues, reaches by virtue of their concatenation an overarching meaning that transcends the individual photograph (1977). The stills therefore suggest a cohesion that is not only atmospheric, but also of a narrative nature: the cinematic compositions insinuate a cameraman and a subject, a protagonist. Photos #5 and #7, for example, step out of the taxi to show its progression through the streets. The combination of ‘optical viewpoint’ shots and the documentation of the protagonist’s proceedings through his environment is a typical cinematic convention.

The soundtrack helps the creation of a spatial whole. According to a psychoanalytic reading of music, the latter lowers the threshold of disbelief due to its connection to a primordial sonic space. This space is the first emplacement of the infant, originating from even before the distinction between the self and the other. As such, due to its primary connection to the psyche, music does not alienate the audience from the image. On the contrary, if a level of simultaneity is upheld, it enhances the viewer’s immersion (Gorbman, 1998).The iThe

The image’s synchronicity with the soundtrack brings us to the second cinematic characteristic identified by Onlow. The techniques used to create a sequence imitate “filmic styles: fades and dissolves create a seamless flow out of the still images” (1999, p. 16). The transitions are made at the pace of the music, which’s increasing rhythm and crescendo suggest a progression that is proper to the narrative paradigm.

The crucial difference with cinema, however, lies in the work’s still indubitable composition of still frames – an atavistic return to the beginnings, to the very materiality, of film. As a consequence, “they expose the illusion of duration in the cinema which is achieved through a ‘false’ movement” (Onlow, 1999, p. 16). Indeed, if such a sequence of images, with a punctilious composition, clever sequential arrangement and accompanied by an engirdling score can suggest motion and narrative, what is the innovation of the true ‘motion pictures’?

Time, space, the world arrested

This essay will not attempt to answer the question, except consider the cracks it reveals in the ontology of cinema and photography, which are equally explored in works such as La Jetée and The Fifth Day. The tension of the latter lies in the friction between photographic and cinematic perceptions of temporal relations and movement. The motion picture arranges its stills in a movement that bears past, present and future – while photography is seen as capturing a past and conserving it for present proof of its existence (Onlow, 1999). The stills in The Fifth Day do both; they have a temporality proper to movement and an eternality proper to photography:

[It] strips cinema of that element which emancipated it from photography, that is of its very core: movement. By doing so it proposes a different kind of temporality which doesn’t only rely on movement and which combines the photographic this was and perhaps still is with the cinematic this is or will be. The photograph-as-cinema encompasses all times at once, an image proclaiming this was, is and will be at the same time (Onlow, 1999, p. 17).

Chris Marker's La Jetée. Also read ASN's post on the film.

Onlow argues that the consequence is an implosion of chronological time, and that, by virtue of its content, this is central to the meaning of La Jetée (Onlow, 1999). In a similar spirit, Bruce Kawin remarks that time travel, the main topic of Marker’s short film, relies on a conceptualization of time as simultaneous – free from a moral linearity: past, present and future co-exist. The reel film is a materialization of this concept, and La Jetée its embodiment (1982).

As seen in My Temporary Visiting Position, Zanni also re-conceptualizes time in his works. Yet due to its ‘data cinema’ quality, it does so in a fundamentally different way: while the settings, the overall photographs, never change and can therefore be seen as an unchanging site visited by a temporal viewer, the details influenced by data flux are ephemeral. These details are partially time-bound, but are never recorded and therefore forever lost. Unlike The Possible Ties and My Temporary Visiting Position, Zanni does not keep, to the viewer’s knowledge, an archive with the different versions of The Fifth Day.

Instead of time, however, the comparable implosion to La Jetée is that of space. Every still depicts a different segment of an otherwise cohesive space: Alexandria. Although arranged in ‘taxi-drive’ sequence, and therefore suggesting the their mere ‘passing’ nature, I suggest that their composition as a sequence of photographs allows the viewer to dwell in every site long enough to establish it as a space by its own virtue. Had it been a film, their temporal existence would have been limited to, as so nicely worded by Onlow above, an ephemeral ‘what is or will be’. All sites are now ‘what was, is, and will be’, despite the viewer-induced changes and the audience’s changing presence.

This reconfiguration of time and space perceptions results in the contemporaneity Zanni’s works rely on for their ‘social consciousness’ value. The viewer is a direct witness and a causer of a social situation abroad. While some images suggest that the social conditions are largely due to domestic demographic, economic and political situations (take Photo #7, which comments on the literacy rate or Photo #4 displays the Corruption Perceptions Index of Egypt), others depend on ‘the foreigner’.

Instead of time, however, the comparable implosion to La Jetée is that of space. Every still depicts a different segment of an otherwise cohesive space: Alexandria. Although arranged in ‘taxi-drive’ sequence, and therefore suggesting the their mere ‘passing’ nature, I suggest that their composition as a sequence of photographs allows the viewer to dwell in every site long enough to establish it as a space by its own virtue. Had it been a film, their temporal existence would have been limited to, as so nicely worded by Onlow above, an ephemeral ‘what is or will be’. All sites are now ‘what was, is, and will be’, despite the viewer-induced changes and the audience’s changing presence.

This reconfiguration of time and space perceptions results in the contemporaneity Zanni’s works rely on for their ‘social consciousness’ value. The viewer is a direct witness and a causer of a social situation abroad. While some images suggest that the social conditions are largely due to domestic demographic, economic and political situations (take Photo #7, which comments on the literacy rate or Photo #4 displays the Corruption Perceptions Index of Egypt), others depend on ‘the foreigner’.

Interestingly, they do so meaningfully. For example, Photo #5 displays the name of the last visitor’s location as a shop sign, alluding to the commerce’s gearing to external culture and the conception of foreign attributes as desirable (‘cool’). The garments in Photo #6 change color depending on the IPs of the 13 last visitors, suggesting the connection between commerce and tourism (in particular, the commercial popularity of, once more, foreign culture). Finally, the billboard in Photo #9 shows movie posters of globally distributed films, implying the spread of a mainly Western culture (supposing Hollywood to still be the main producer of these goods).

The interconnectedness of Egypt’s topography and foreign culture is therefore underlined by Zanni in order to “investigate topical subjects for the so called “Middle East” aiming for a comparison with the audience’s birth/living country” (Zanni, 2009b, “Synopsis”). The work is a hint towards the far reach of globalization, and the ‘butterfly effect’ so likely to arise in the chaos-like complexity of global networks.[1]

Formally, however, The Fifth Day seems also to comment, and perhaps searches to redress, the ‘fragmented’ nature of our worldviews. Neil Postman offers us his view on the television’s effect on human culture and structures of thoughts in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public discourse in the age of show business. To summarize his interesting argument, he sees a saturation of our capacity to concentrate, delve into and actively engage with socially relevant topics due to the fragmented worldview transmitted to us by the media (2005 [1985]). By insisting on the retention of the image for a longer time than usually allocated by news-giving media, Zanni forces the viewer to engage with the image in an intense fashion.

Conclusions on the Zanni analyses: the ‘social consciousness experiences’

I began these series with the intention of showing Zanni’s innovative heightening of conventional media was wielded with the intent of creating a contemporaneity of the viewer with the artwork’s subject and thus creating the ‘social consciousness experiences’ he wills his audience to undergo. In The Possible Ties, Zanni ponders on the ephemerality of a media world and gives it an anxiety-ridden existential twist. In My Temporary Visiting Position, Zanni comments on the emotional duality of being away from home: the constant melancholy versus the advantages of being abroad; the connectedness that is retained thanks to media such as the Internet; and the collapse of time and space, which questions the exact position of the human being and conceptions of the self. Finally, The Fifth Day is a comment on the global nature of globalization, the usually cursory nature of media news and again a reconsideration of time and space.

With this knowledge, the ambiguities of interactivity, immersion and engagement that riddle the discussion of contemporary digital art are effaced in front of the concept of a global mediation – a concept that does not allow for a neatly cut distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ world. Rather, it expands the one onto the other, to create an entity that connects the individual’s physical space (which consists of only limited interaction with society) to a shared meta-universe of ideas (cyberspace) that find their grounding in the individual worlds of many (and thus is rather omniscient in nature and allows for many alternative entrances to society). The traditional keywords for media art are then exposed in their incapability to truly capture the essence of data cinema: interaction is found on the level of ideas instead of technology or user experience; engagement relies on a sufficient amount of immersion (its supposed antipode) to create a significant space for the spectator. Current definitions and applications of these terms rely too forcibly on the relationship between the individual and the artwork as a fundamentally private exchange between idiosyncratic worldviews. Only the global mediation achieves a helpful description of Zanni’s art, in which the world of the artwork is one that is public and social, while the individual’s is private yet open to socialization.

In other words, a virtual landscape comes into being in all three works, informed by specific data but which’s gist lies in the idea that gathered the data in the first place. Mediating between existence and non-existence, whether it is threatened by a fragmentation of the self through a mosaic world-view, the overflow of information or the instabilities of physical displacement, these landscapes form the loci of one’s mind’s encounter with the awareness of many others. As such, through his artworks, Zanni “expands an individual psychosis into a societal and image-political horizon” (Grau, 2007, p. 141).

The movement from an individualistic worldview towards a ‘societal horizon’ falls in line with Zanni aim to produce ‘social consciousness experiences’. The re-conceptualization of a network-entrenched human being lies, at least in Zanni’s works, in the creation of a virtual landscape that permits the connection, the empathy, with other world-inhabitants through the overlap of familiar with foreign elements. In other words, we see the acting out of Kluitenberg’s global mediation, albeit differing from piece to piece. In conclusion, Zanni’s motto “Information is the new color” really does summarize his works and his intentions – information (data) shapes the artwork (and subsequent worldviews) as never before.

There are many questions that remain unanswered, and in these analyses unexplored. I have focused on the aesthetic qualities and devices used to convey a particular message and entice the global mediation as described above. However, how can we conceptualize Zanni’s relationship to his own works? Put differently, questions of authorship and spectatorship emerge with the socialization and connection of the artwork to the spectator’s ‘real’ world. The artwork no longer constructs a fictional universe that may be seen as separate from reality. However, the creator of the fictional universe, the artist, cannot be the creator of our physical reality. Or can he? The latter suggestion forces us to review the exact extent to which our worldviews, our realities, are imminently shaped by the media and the mental schemas it transmits.

Finally, if the artwork has shifted in its means of exposure and production, and is never completed due to its ever-changing nature, are we witnessing a redefinition in the ontology of art? Must it change our understanding of art created before the upcoming of novel technology? Typically, conceptual shifts brought on by innovative creations do occur and affect our stance towards the ‘old’. Sometimes, as happened with the art of painting after the introduction of photography and later of film, this may liberate the previous from certain constraints and set particular expectations on the new. Whether Internet Art can be perceived as changing the very nature of art is therefore equally a valid enquiry – and I have already hinted above at one change: art’s nod to tactility.

As a last addition to this discussion, I wish to point towards the essay that overhauled certain ways of perceiving the arts within a contemporary, technological society: Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2008 [1936]). He anticipated the revolution that the mass reproducibility and mass-consumption of art would entail and one of his insights holds that “‘Getting closer to things’ in both spatial and human terms is every bit as passionate a concern of today’s masses as their tendency to surmount the uniqueness of each circumstance by seeing it in reproduction” (2008 [1936], p. 9). In many ways, Zanni’s works are the embodiment of this conclusion: ‘getting closer to things’ indeed echoes what Grau saw as the main potential of the extension of one’s mental spheres through the media and works such as Zanni’s. ‘Surmounting uniqueness by reproduction’ indicates a shift from the individualized world to a more social one, one in which repetitiveness (which Zanni’s works clearly display by their daily re-editing) is key to the passage to a social meta-level. In his essay, Benjamin already foresaw many aspects of Internet Art.

In conclusion, Zanni’s works are but one instance of the exploration of the World Wide Web’s prospects without relinquishing the benefits of other arts, creating varied approaches, phenomena and even alternate worldviews. They may point towards a new human being, one with a distinct position and relation between its self and the world, one with a ‘globally mediated’ world-image. Only time and study will tell in how far these arts will prosper and catalyze. As Stallabrass puts it:

[N]et art, then, is [to be] seen as an archaeology of the future, drawing on the part (especially of modernism), and producing a complex interaction of unrealized past potential and Utopian futures in a synthesis that is close to the ideal of Walter Benjamin (Stallabrass, 2003, p. 48).

[1] Globalism takes place in four sectors: the military, the economic, the environmental and the social (cultural). The rise in globalism (globalization) is seen to progress in increasingly densifying networks, where a lack of point of reference likens it to ‘chaos’ theories, where “small events in one place can have catalytic effects” (Keohane & Nye, 2000, “Density of networks”).

Related topics:

The Zanni analyses (I): The Possible Ties

The Zanni analyses (II): My Temporary Visiting Position

The Crystals of AION: Time and Sense in La Jetée (1962)

Do evaluative attitudes 'track' moral facts?

The Darwinian Dilemma, introduced by Sharon Street, is based on a simple empirical point: evolutionary forces have played a crucial role in the development of human evaluative attitudes. But, if this is the case, Street claims, then moral realists, who believe that there exist normative truths independent of our evaluative attitudes, have to explain the relation between those truths and the evaluative attitudes. The dilemma is simple. If realists accept that evaluative attitudes have evolved to track natural moral facts, then they have to provide an account of that tracking (which they have failed to do). If, on the other hand, they reject this assumption, then they are directly confronted with skepticism: there would be no reason (apart from a gigantic coincidence) to think that our attitudes reflect some independent moral facts. In his criticism of Street, David Copp attempts to provide a realist account of moral truths that will not be vulnerable to the Darwinian Dilemma. He proceeds by specifying the nature of the truth conditions of moral propositions, stipulating that a given moral proposition is true if a morally authoritative standard enjoys a particular truth-grounding status. For Copp, the morally authoritative standard is the normative code that would best serve the basic needs of a society, if it were to serve as its moral code (2008, p.199). According to this “society-centered” theory, morality has the function of “enabling society to meet its needs” (p.198). If we accept this account, Copp claims, then we can provide a realist account of morality compatible with the evolutionary explanation of the evaluative attitudes: the evolved attitudes would favor behavior that is very similar to the behavior favored my the social moral code; i.e. the evaluative attitudes effectively ‘track’ (or ‘quasi-track’) moral truths.

But, the variant of moral realism that Copp offers falls radically short of properly addressing the Darwinian dilemma. Namely, the crucial challenge that Sharon Street has posed to the moral realist is the following: explain the striking coincidence between the evolved behavior and the independent moral truths posited by the realist (either by providing an account of the ‘tracking’ or by postulating a different type of relation)!  But, what Copp has proposed is simply an axiomatic re-iteration of this coincidence put forward as a realist theory. Far from explaining the ‘tracking’ account, he arbitrarily postulates a standard that has a truth-grounding status, and then ‘demonstrates’ that the moral truths ‘grounded’ in this standard are bound to be the same as those favored by the evolved evaluative attitudes. But, what is at stake is precisely the explanation of the coincidence (if independence of moral truths is to be postulated). Namely, what (if not the evolved evaluative apparatus) justifies the normative weight of the societal moral code? In virtue of which principle are those moral codes natural truths? Here, to simply postulate that those moral codes “better enable a society to meet its basic needs” (p.199) is utterly insufficient, since it is only a re-formulation of the evolutionary account (Copp does not offer any alternative justification of the principle). And, this is particularly problematic since the evolutionary account succeeds in explaining the emergence of those social codes without postulating any normative truths. Effectively, Copp is completely stranded: if he wants to put forward a theory of normative realism, he needs to offer us a “principle of normativity” – explaining why it is the case that a social code that enables a better social functioning should be considered as really authoritative. In the absence of such a principle, he is simply proposing an evolutionary account enriched with an axiomatic postulation of moral truths (thoroughly unexplained).

David Copp is not successful in providing a theory of moral realism not vulnerable to the Darwinian Dilemma. Instead, he is arbitrary postulating a moral (natural) standard and then re-iterating the coincidence between the evolved behavior and the supposed moral facts. A proper moral realism does not need an axiomatic definition of moral truths; it needs a plausible evolutionary model of explaining the relation between those truths and evolved evaluative attitudes.

Related topics:

Robert J. Richards and the Naturalistic Fallacy

Philip Kitcher and Psychological Altruism

Naturalism Without Clout: Richard Joyce and Moral Authority

Is moral discourse futile in the absence of a categorical 'oomph'?

Is “practical clout” (the unique combination of inescapability and authority) an essential component of moral judgments? Richard Joyce’s case against moral naturalism is built exactly on such a premise: naturalism without clout is simply not acceptable. The reason, Joyce claims, is very simple: in the absence of clout (the motivator of inescapability), the moral deliberator may legitimately ask himself what kinds of reasons he has “to care about [the particular] instance of moral wrongness” (2006, p.205). And, the possible answers to this crucial question are simply not palatable. Namely, certain persons may reject the existence of any reasons to be concerned by the moral judgment. They may be blasé about stealing “the newspaper in the hotel hallway”, while calmly acknowledging the wrongness of the act. Alternatively, persons may ‘diagnose’ (weak or strong) reasons to perform the action they judge to be moral, and subsequently weigh the reasons for and against the action. But, if this is the case, Joyce is adamant, then surely the desires “to act immorally” can encourage the person to directly modify the pro-morality reasons and desires. That is to say, in the absence of the motivational ‘oomph’, the process of ‘weighing’ reasons can render moral discourse futile – if morality is not authoritative, one can simply discard it in the juggling deliberation of ‘pro’ and  ‘con’ personal reasons. Consequently, either we reject “naturalism without clout” or we acknowledge “moral psychopaths” and eschew the need for distinct moral discourse.

But, in his fervent defense of anti-realism, Joyce situates us on the horns of a false dilemma. Specifically, the absence of practical ‘oomph’ (the authoritative motivational pump) does not directly entail a cold deliberation of reasons. Namely, one may very well posit a motivational mechanism that is contingently connected to the deliberative judgment. The ‘weighing’ of reasons, that Joyce dramatically caricaturizes, does not have to be performed in a motivational vacuum. Quite the contrary, a deliberation that renders an action “morally wrong” can be connected to an emotional mechanism and ‘motivate’ the performance of the action (this does not imply a necessary, intrinsic connection). In such a model, the moral judgment triggers an emotional response, and the salience of that response is dependent on the perceived severity of the moral transgression. Thus, contingently, one will be motivated to act in accordance with the moral deliberation; but this would not imply motivational internalism (psychopaths do exist, and their judgment-motivation connection is simply severed – that’s why they are psychopaths!)[1]. In addition, this type of model helps us fight Joyce’s second objection: the obsolescence of moral discourse. Namely, the absence of practical clout (remember: practical clout implies inescapability!) doesn’t render moral discourse futile – a contingent link between moral deliberation and motivation effectively “saves the day”: it explains the utility of a distinctly moral discourse while rejecting the inescapability implied by the moral ‘oomph’. And, to follow Joyce in the excursion to “common-sense land”, isn’t this precisely what we encounter in everyday life? Isn’t the combination of motivation and deliberative distance what we usually associate with moral judging? That is, while murder certainly is a particularly intense motivational pump (severity influences the emotional salience), is the same really the case with “stealing a tomato from a supermarket as a child”? To reduce Joyce’s claim to an absurdity, isn’t there something truly monstrous (Kantian monstrous!?) about a person who is completely overwhelmed by the ‘oomph’ of “not stealing a newspaper from a hotel hallway”?[2] The total loss of deliberative distance (the weighing of reasons) is, effectively, something that is rarely encountered in everyday life, and not the distance itself (as Freudians have insisted for decades: not only is moral judgment compatible with an additional ‘weighing’ of reasons, but very often guilt itself is a reason to transgress – the thrill of the guilt in cheating, for example).

Conclusively, Joyce’s case against “naturalism without clout” is very weak. It fails in at least two ways: a) by imposing a false dilemma while overlooking the possibility of contingent motivation; and b) by misrepresenting the common-sense picture of moral judging. As sympathetic as an anti-realist (like myself) can be towards Joyce, this is far from rendering naturalism guilty “beyond reasonable doubt”.

[2] According to an old humorous psychoanalytic dictum, “the true madman is not the beggar who thinks he is the king, but the king who thinks he is really a king”. Perhaps we should postulate a similar meta-ethical formula: the true freak is not the one who wonders whether there are any reasons to act morally, but the one who is so “practically oomphed” that he cannot think of a reason to act amorally.

Related topics:

David Copp and the Darwinian Dilemma

Do extended selves have an experiential unity?

Does the extended mind imply an extended self? In the penultimate paragraph of their groundbreaking essay The Extended Mind (1998), Andy Clark and David Chalmers answered this question in the positive. For them, the extension of mentality beyond the boundary of the skin entails an analogous extension of the self beyond that boundary (p.18). Not only are cognitive states and processes constituted by external components, but agents themselves are best seen as “spread into the world” (p.18).

Although somewhat tangentual to their main argument, this claim by Clark and Chalmers has stirred a significant debate in philosophical circles, a fact hardly surprising given the relevance of the issue both in philosophical and social domains. In her recent article Persons and the Extended Mind Thesis (2009), Lynne Rudder Baker has criticized Clark’s and Chalmers’ bold claim, arguing that the coryphaei of the EM thesis have gone “a step too far” in the direction of extension. Although, Baker claims, we are entitled to view cognitive processes as determined by both internal and external components, the same does not apply to persons. Strictly speaking, there are extended minds and cognitive systems, but there are no such things as extended selves.

Here, I will sketch the basic arguments proposed by Baker, focusing on her ‘qualms’ against the extended self thesis and her account of persons as constituted by bodies. I will argue that Baker endorses a methodologically cheap variant of internalism, rendering her criticism of “self-externalism” decisively trivial. I will claim that the principle of “bodily constitution”, as proposed by Baker, is not a serious obstacle to externalism, and is widely compatible with all variants of the “extended self” theory. Conclusively, I will argue for a positive answer to the central question: extended minds do imply extended selves.

THE TWO ‘QUALMS’ OF BAKER

Lynne Rudder Baker presents herself as a traditional externalist. She explicitly accepts Putnam’s idea that the contents of thoughts are partly determined by features of the environment (p.2.). Following Hurley, she calls this view content-externalism. But, Baker does not stop there. She also accepts the principal idea of the EM thesis: “not only is the content [of thoughts] determinable by features of the environment, but the vehicle [the ‘carrier’ of thoughts] may also be spread out into the environment” (pp.3-4). Vehicle-externalism, then, is also accepted as true – neither the brain nor the skin sets a boundary on the vehicles of cognition (p.5). In the vocabulary of Clark and Chalmers, Baker is both a passive and and an active externalist, endorsing both the individuation of thoughts by external contents and the idea of cognition extending to tools and social equipment.

But, when it comes to the ‘self’, the similarity with the vehicle-externalists ends very abruptly. While accepting that cognitive processes “loop out” into the world, Baker is adamant that the EM thesis cannot be applied to the ‘self’:

On my view, there are no extended persons – persons – who extend beyond their bodies. However, there are enduring persons – subjects of experience, agents, who can think reflectively of themselves throughout much of their existence (p.9).

Baker presents her argument in the form of two ‘qualms’ against the idea of the extended self (p.7). The first one is centered around the idea of the experiental persistence of persons. Even if we accept the existence of an extended cognitive system comprised of a human being and an external tool (“Otto and his notebook”, in the famous argument by Clark and Chalmers), this existence in no way implies the existence of an extended experiental agent that would correspond to the novel cognitive system (p.7). In other words, the transitory cognitive coupling between Otto and his notebook does not generate a new experiental self (“Otto + his notebook”). Otto does not expand to become an extended entity – “[he] does not dissolve or disappear into a cognitive system” (p.7). Strictly speaking, transitory cognitive couplings do not produce transitory selves. There is an experiental persistence of persons which is immune to the cognitive ‘dissolving’ of the self. In the vocabulary of Baker, Otto the person is a concrete particular, and regardless of the extent of cognitive extension, the extended cognitive system cannot be viewed as such. To put it succinctly, persons have points-of-view, and cognitive systems emphatically do not.

The second ‘qualm’ that Baker brings up against the extended self thesis is the distinction between the personal and the subpersonal levels in the analysis of mentality. For her, the distinction between the two levels is ontological; a point, she claims, that is not appopriately recognized by Clark and Chalmers (p.8). There is a fundamental ontological difference between the subpersonal states and processes of a cognitive system, which can be partially constituted by external elements, and the personal states and processes which are always internal. For example, a cochlear implant is a subpersonal device and can be an external component of the extended cognitive system. On the other hands, a tool for conscious manipulation (such as a pencil) is always outside the conscious self, since the personal experience never extends to incorporate it. For Baker, a state is at the personal level “if the person can come to acknowledge the state as her own” (p.10). Defined as such, personal states presuppose consciousness; any state that does not presuppose consciousness is, by definition, subpersonal. And, while neural mechanisms or properties, undoubtedly, ‘underlie’ the conscious states, the states themselves are still at a personal level (the neural mechanisms are subpersonal) (p.10). Baker insists on the strict separation for a reason:

Keeping personal and subpersonal levels distinct is important to me because I do not believe that there are extended agents or extended persons; however, I shall propose a modest hypothesis that recognizes us as enduring persons, whose subpersonal states may have nonbiological parts that play essential roles in cognitive processing (p.8).

So, Clark and Chalmers are right about the possible extension of subpersonal processes beyond the skin, but are wrong about the extension of selves beyond this boundary. Personal states may be comprised of external subpersonal vehicles, but they are themselves states of an enduring subject of experience, a ‘person’ with a persistent, non-dissolving point-of-view.

In order to ground her objections in a unifying account, Baker proposes an ontological model, according to which persons are material beings wholly constituted by bodies, but not identical to the bodies that constitute them (p.12). Persons differ from bodies in persistence conditions: persons endure as long as they have first-person perspectives, while bodies endure as long they maintain certain crucial (typically biological) functions (p.12). Therefore, persons are not identical to bodies: a person can have different bodies at different times and these bodies can be comprised of constituents both organic or bionic. And, while these bodies are usually biological organisms, they are only contingently so – a person may be constituted by a body that is not an organism, as traditionally defined. A body, Baker claims, can be defined by a simple formula: “necessarily, x is y’s body at t if and only if y is a person and x constitutes y at t” (p.12).

With this ontological formula, Baker extrapolates her main argument against the extended self thesis: while bodies can be comprised of biological or non-biological constitutents, persons cannot be ‘extended’ in any recognizeable manner, since they operate on a different ontological level. However they are constituted, persons are enduring experiental agents, not contingent upon transitory subpersonal couplings. The extended mind, therefore, does not imply an extended self.

VALID AND CHEAP INTERNALISM: TOWARDS AN EXTENDED SELF [1]

In order to understand properly Baker’s criticism, we have to go back to the central question that we are concerned with. Namely, what would it mean for the self to be ‘extended’? Is an extended self simply a self whose causally efficacious constituents (vehicles) expand beyond its body (constitutive account)? Or is the extension of the self fundamentally experiential, describing the conscious acknowledgment of external states as one’s own (experiental account)? A careful analysis sees Baker as consistently conflating these two distinct uses of ‘extended’, arguing both that constitutively “there are no persons who extend beyond their bodies” and that external states cannot be experienced as “one’s own”. Consequently, to properly isolate the distinct claims, we have to examine the arguments one by one.

If Baker’s “modest proposal” of self-internalism is to be understood in the constitutive sense, then her assertion that “there are no persons who extend beyond their bodies” is open to serious objections. Namely, if personal states are constituted by subpersonal processes (which Baker grants as being extended), and if personal processes are individuated by external contents, then in what sense are personal states constitutively internal? Baker’s answer at this point hinges on an employment of her ontological model: persons are constituted by bodies, and never by environmental external features. And, since they are constituted by bodies, they cannot, by definition, be extended.

To understand the problem with this argument, we have to distinguish two ways in which one can be an internalist about the self. First, one can equate the body that constitutes the self with the biological organism (bounded by the skin) and claim that only internal subpersonal processes (processes not lying beyond the boundary of the skin) can constitute the self. This is a valid form of internalism. It insists on a profound difference between internal and external subpersonal processes, a difference which can be grounded in various ways (for an example of this approach, see Adams and Aizawa’s The Bounds of Cognition (2008)). But, this is emphatically not how Lynne Baker argues. In order to capitalise on the ontological difference between persons and bodies, she insists on not equating the body with the biological organism, opting for a constitutive formula of the person’s body: “necessarily, x is y’s body at t if and only if y is a person and x constitutes y at t” (p.12). But, by defining the body as that which constitutes the person at a particular time, Baker completely eschews the criterion of the skin in determining the ‘externality’ of the constitutive processes. That is to say, if the body simply is what constitutes the person at the time, then it is trivially true that there are no persons “who extend beyond their bodies” (p.9). If the body is not bounded by the skin (and includes subpersonal processes outside the skin), then any form of externalism can be accommodated into a constitutive internalism. This is a cheap form of internalism, which simply begs the question against the externalist, by determining per definitionem what is fundamentally at issue.

But, this is not the whole story of Baker’s argument. Insisting on a ontological abyss between the personal and the subpersonal space, she insists that persons cannot be extended since they possess an experiental persistence: they have a “first-person perspective” that is not contingent upon transitory cognitive couplings. Persons, in short, do not dissolve to form experiental analogues of extended cognitive systems. But, having isolated the problematic form of constitutive internalism Baker endorses, we may again legitimately ask: just in what sense are the experientally persistent persons internal? If the criterion for the determination of personal states is the possibility of acknowledgment of states as “one’s own” (i.e. the first-person perspective), then a lot of beyond-the-skin processes can easily be classified as personal. As I write this essay, I have a notebook on which I sketch my general argument. Even if I presuppose the experiental persistence of my person, I can recognize the argument sketched on the paper as my own, despite its lying beyond the boundary of my skin. The argument presupposes conscious thought, and therefore is decisively at the personal level. But, that does not make it any less external (to insist that the argument is internal just because it is mine is again to proliferate a cheap form of internalism which begs the question against the externalist).

This example points directly to the profound misunderstanding that lies at the core of Baker’s account of the extended self. Baker repeatedly stresses that persons are enduring, i.e. they do not dissolve to form novel experiental agents of extended cognitive systems. But, to insist on this point is to radically misunderstand the idea of the extended self. Namely, it is not the case that Otto (our Alzheimer-stricken friend) disappears in order to form a new, extended agent (Otto + his notebook). Quite the contrary, Otto himself is already an extended experiental agent. In other words, the experiental analogue of the cognitive system Otto + the notebook is noone else but Otto himself. This is a fundamental point to any proper understanding of the extended self: the extended self should not be viewed as an independent layer “added to the periphery of some internal… proto self” (Malafouris, 2008, p.1997). The extended self simply is the self, the ‘person’ always already constituted by subpersonal processes lying both inside and outside the skin. Insisting stubbornly on the constitutive relationship of the body, Baker fails to appreciate the central insight of the extended self hypothesis: the idea that the existence of environmental and social cognitive tools was the necessary pre-requisite for the formation of the self. That is to say, we are not primiordially persons that can be extended by an addition of external elements; we are persons only because we are already extended in the social environment.

In conclusion, Lynne Baker’s criticism of the extended self hypothesis falls radically short of its intended goal. Both in its constitutive and its experiential variant, the theory of Baker fails to establish an enduring internal self. Her two ‘qualms’ against the extended self hypothesis reveal two different aspects of what we have characterized as “cheap self-internalism”, a theory which renders self-internalism trivially true and compatible with any variant of vehicle externalism. The person may indeed coincide with the body, but if that body includes beyond-the-skin states and processes, then the person is extended in any theoretically and practically relevant sense. The extended mind does imply an extended self.

[1] The valid-cheap distinction was inspired by D.S. Wilson’s distinction between valid and cheap individualism in natural selection. For Wilson’s account, see Levels of Selection: An Alternative to Individualism in Biology and the Human Sciences (1989).  In Social Networks, 1989, 11:257-72

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[I]t was a simple game that explored a universal subject (Rohrer, 2008, par. 9).

Passage

In a world where everything seems to change at a breakneck speed, one might very well wonder what remains the same throughout the ages, considering the modern pressurizing tendency to change, evolve and progress. It is from the premise that there is a fundamental human nature shaped by evolution that the biopoetical approach to the arts aims to discern the biologically determined components of the artwork that precede culture – in opposition to many streams of art criticism, which directly dissect the historical and cultural properties of the works. It is in search and in defense of the value of biopoetics that this essay will interpret one artwork assuming the biopoetical framework –also to be called Darwinian art criticism– as stipulated by one of the field’s most prominent and eloquent founding fathers: Joseph Carroll.

In search of an appropriate piece –though in biopoetics, all works are liable for analysis– I decided to uphold two criteria to better prove the point of biopoetics. The first is that the work should have distinctively contemporary features, and the second, that it should nonetheless be regarded as universally appealing. In these criteria, I am looking for an artwork that in its expression and existence may seem as ephemeral as is typical of contemporary culture, yet which carries a message that still touches a large audience. It is on the art game Passage, created by Jason Rohrer (2007a), that I finally settled. Passage is a digital online game labeled as art; it is a brand new genre that could only come into being with the help of present-day technology and conceptualizations. But Passage, more importantly, has awakened a largely emotional response from its audience – as was remarked by a journalist: “gamers confess that they’ve been moved to tears” (Rutkoff, 2008).

A word of explanation on the nature of art games may do well here. Some games possess a set of features which distances them from the mainstream game-genre and affiliates them rather with other artistry. Primarily, these features are technological in nature. Examples may include the nostalgic application of tools long repudiated by the conventional game or the borrowing of techniques from other fields to achieve a unique effect. Additionally, an art game may also go against the standards that are posed to games, such as devoiding the game of a final goal or even of player agency (Zimmerman, 2002). Passage, as will be elaborated on shortly, possesses several features – including the confirmation and the approval of respectively the artist and the audience– that categorize it as an art game.

Electing Joseph Carroll as my main source on the biopoetical approach, I will first outline his theory and highlight those facets most important to my interpretation. A synopsis of Passage will follow, tailed by its Darwinian analysis. I will finally wrap up with a note on the peculiarities of the medium and of the culture surrounding it. All in all, I will conclude that Passage is understandably universally appealing for the themes it addresses. Moreover, the medium and our cultural understandings frame the work and heighten the experience of the user – thus proving that the biopoetical approach does not need to ignore culture at all, and that embracing it may end in a fuller and more satisfactory analysis of the artwork.

Joseph Carroll’s Biopoetics[1]

The study of literature may bring us to a fuller comprehension of nature and humankind – from this premise, it follows that literature must have a biological base in human nature and accordingly be just as influenced by evolution as any other human component. Such is the ultimate conclusion of Joseph Carroll, who ardently defends Darwinian literary criticism against its skeptic opponents as well as its abusive appliers (1995). Carroll has consecrated much time and words in order to lay the foundations of a framework for literary critique that effectively marries literature with evolutionary theory and that I will now briefly overview.

The centrality of literature in human development cannot be dismissed as trivial, if only for the persistent presence of literary forms throughout times and cultures. Carroll maintains that literature can very well be seen as a sort of educational simulator. Seen as psychology and sociology are fairly recent fields, literature used to be the sole repository for knowledge on human nature. As such, the primary subject matter in literature is indeed human experience, in which significant information on human nature forms the essence of the literary texts (Carroll, 1999, 2004).

Specifying this idea, literature provides for a “sense of psychological order” by representing temporal and spatial variables in conjunction with “elemental structures of human concerns” (Carroll, 1999, p. 170). Differently put, it creates order out of a chaos of external elements pertaining to the environment and internal happenings inherent to the human being. Naturally, there are various ways to construct such ordering devices –which we shall call mental maps– as we nowadays posses not only a wide array of sciences, but also religions, philosophies, ideologies and other cultural artifacts.

The Arts, however, have a particular characteristic that highlight their existence: the use of emotionally saturated imagery. Emotions spark the setting-into-motion of systems built to cater for impulses crucial for the species’ survival. These impulses, Carroll argues, can be boiled down to two basic needs common to all humanity: the somatic and the reproductive. Many human constructs and other impulses might eventually exist in service of these final wants – whether directly of indirectly (think of the orgasm or of the advantageous features in competitive sexual selection) (Carroll, 2004). These structures are emotion-bound, so as to ensure their effectiveness; the allocation of good and bad emotions is controlled by whether the action is favorable for the –often unconscious– want (Carroll, 2004).

This is a very superficial and simplifying explanation on the nature of the human being, but it is meant to set up a basic understanding of the workings of art. As such, the arts fulfill two necessities: the cognitive need for order (whence the emotional pleasure at the interaction with art) and the simulation that familiarizes us with several circumstances and their emotional attachments. As Carroll so eloquently put, the arts “locate the whole complex and interactive array of human behavioral systems within models of the total world order” (Carroll, 2004, p. 198). As a consequence, it enhances humanity’s personal and social development, introducing not only a heightened awareness of one’s self (and the subjective ways in which we eventually organize ourselves in our environment) but also a comprehension for the situation of others –a theory of mind– as well as an ability to flexibly respond to continually changing circumstances (Carroll, 1999).

All in all, representations in literature must therefore be akin to the motives, impulses and concerns humans need to deal with. Authors have an intuitive knowledge of which themes address all of us; they therefore rely on a common ground of motives that underpin our lives. However, as has subtly shined through before, this biopoetical approach equally allows for individual and cultural variation in literature, despite its universal potential. In fact, the gist of the representation lies within the author’s identity, as what will be represented about a human universal are the author’s own views and values: “[l]iterary representations are interpretive models that are mediated through the perspectives of the authors who fashion them” (Carroll, 2001, p. 10). This further reinforces the educational purposes as literature, since it instructs us how other beings can perceive certain events in contrast to our own perceptions. It also allows for heightened cognitive activity through the critical reflection on one’s environment. For instance, an author may address a cultural convention that stands opposite to an elemental reality, and therefore criticizes, or at least underlines, a discrepancy between nature and culture (Carroll, 2004).

Finally, one more step needs be taken before proceeding to a biopoetical reading of Passage while endorsing the concepts outlined above. Though Carroll does mention the arts in general throughout his writings, he mainly concentrates –as is apparent in my own discussion– on literature. Passage, however, is an art game –a genre that is new and relatively undefined in itself–, not a literary text. In the introduction, I specified why Passage is an art game, and one of the mentioned characteristics entails the presence of previous artistic forms. Passage, as will become clear in its synopsis and discussion, retains many characteristics proper to literature itself: a plot, a typical narrative structure, relatable characters and a tactile author. It combines these features with some of those proper to games, all the while discarding game-features that would alienate Passage too much from literary works, such as the setting of an achievable goal as the main inducer for the gamer to play. This is why, in my opinion, Carroll’s discussion may be extended to include Passage. Nevertheless, it is important to mind the artwork’s peculiarities that spring from its essential genre. I will argue that a Darwinian reading as formulated by Carroll still stands, and is even reinforced by those attributes and properties that generally do not find their way into literature, such as goal-oriented gaming.

Passage – a ‘memento mori’

Figure 1: Passage title screen

To say that Passage, especially in its first seconds of play, does not induce a peculiar feeling of slight awkwardness in the gamer would be an understatement. After pressing a random key to escape the motionlessness of the title screen (see figure 1), the unprepared gamer is confronted with a particular setup: the size of the play surface is exactly 12 pixels high and 100 pixels long – in other words, the screen is mostly black, except for a thin stroke in the middle (see figure 2). A highly pixelated scene is presented to the gamer, with a male pixel-character, the avatar, waiting for a reaction on the far left end of the play surface.

During its 5-minute duration, Passage’s gameplay remains quite basic. The directional keys control the avatar’s movements through the environment: left, right, up and down. The game does not posses any other functions – inevitably forcing the player to pay close attention to all other features as from the start. The counter on the upper right corner of the play screen will get the gamer’s attention before long, as it seems to sum up points as the avatar advances towards the right.

Figure 2: Passage game screen

A stage of exploration begins. As will soon become clear, the setting is imbued with obstacles encumbering the avatar’s progression in a mild maze-life form. It is not difficult to avoid getting trapped, but looking for alternative routes beyond the straightforward left-to-right approach pays off when the avatar stumbles upon chests that surprise with a considerable amount of points upon opening. This discovery will probably impel the gamer to collect as many points as possible, while waiting for something else to happen.

In the very beginning, however, that extra bit of excitement will almost immediately present itself. A hazy outline of another character slowly emerges and when the avatar –upon choice if the gamer– touches the form, it clears up and presents us a woman. The two fall in love and from now on the male avatar has gained a companion. Companionship has both advantages and disadvantages, as re-play will prove. On one hand, exploring in a tandem earns the gamer the double of points. On the other, the avatar’s mobility is greatly diminished as many obstacles form too narrow spaces for both to fit through. Some chests may therefore become unreachable and the alluring bounty remains sadly uncollected.

Whatever the choice –“picking up” the female companion or not, exploring vertically or horizontally, etc. – time will show a gradual change in the characters as they slowly start to age. One of the most innovative features of the game underlines this as it becomes clear that the screen represents a life timeline. In the beginning on the game, a relatively large section on the right side is blurry and seems to show future possibilities, symbolized by the different colors pertaining to up-coming backgrounds (see figure 3). As the avatar reaches his middle age, the right blurry section decreases and the left begins to haze, depicting the avatar’s past. Finally, in the avatar’s old age, the future has disappeared and all is clear at the right, while the left hazy section takes up a great part of the screen. In addition, while moving through these different stages, the character’s position in relation to the screen is gently forced from left to right, meaning that the young avatar advances to the right but remains constantly on the left-hand side of the screen because the background moves simultaneously. The middle-aged avatar walks in the middle, and the old avatar almost touches the right-hand border. This movement symbolizes the progression through life as well.

Figure 3: The young avatar remains in the far right, while his future is a blurry haze on the left. Slowly, the character will advance towards the center and the right end will begin to blur.

Finally, the climax announces itself after a little less that 5 minutes gameplay. If accompanied by the female character, she abruptly transforms into a tombstone – she died (see figure 4). The incident considerably slows down the elderly male character’s walk. In both scenarios (single or partnered), the avatar will soon die in the same fashion. A shadow covering the play surface slowly slides in from left to right and eventually the word “Passage” is revealed to the gamer. This closing is naturally greatly reminiscent of the typical “The End” or “Game Over” notifications.

Figure 4: The female character’s tombstone.

Due to its setup, its play, its simplicity, its philosophical dimension and possibly also contributable to its minimalistic but haunting soundtrack, the game leaves the gamer in a slight haze after its rather crude semi-dramatic end. The creator, Jason Rohrer, explained in his ‘Creator’s Statement’ that his intention –although he adds his intentions to come second only to the gamer’s interpretation– was to fashion a memento mori game that entices the gamer to pause and reflect upon life and death – but especially upon choices made in life with the ever-present knowledge of the looming inevitable end (Rohrer, 2007b). Rohrer consequently termed the theme as “existential terror” (Rohrer, 2008, par. 3). Surely questions on mortality and life-altering decisions concern the whole of humanity – we can safely assume no human being escapes death or the sporadic fear life can inspire. This human universal is the game’s feature that is most blatantly advocating for a biopoetical analysis.

The biopoetical Passage

“To make use of cognitive domains as categories of literary analysis, we have to correlate domains with some specific structure of human motives and concerns and locate the functions of literary representation within this structure of motives and concerns” (Carroll, 1999, p. 163).

Consistent with the framework summarized above, the first elements to be distinguished from the text are the human universals underpinning Passage. It has already been brought to attention that the basic impulses may be boiled down to the somatic and the reproductive – they are described by Carroll as being fundamental realities of human life histories (Carroll, 2004). Passage is the story of one character’s life, and one central happening is the decision of whether to live accompanied, or not. In fact, due to the point system, it is not easy to say that the choice for a female gives preference to the reproductive impulses, and the choice for bachelorship listens to resource acquisition (because of the augmented number of treasures being within one’s reach). Selecting partnership also increases one’s points in the game – while bachelorship does not have to equal celibacy. There is here a first point that may be interesting for the human being: the satisfactory pay-offs each choice proves that several choices might the right one – one needs to find what is best fitting and to be willing to give up what the other choice might have offered in supplement. Crucial decision-making is central to human life histories to the extent that it can define someone’s future happiness in great part. Passage is therefore not about a preferential treatment for one impulse, but rather proves that both impulses are catered to in both choices, and that a complex web of superposing structures (culture, personal aspiration, personality traits, etc.) may stir us to one direction or the other – what we would like to find out is which direction will suit us, as individuals, best.

Before discussing the issue of individuality, other elements in Passage must first be made justice to. There is more of a common base to humanity than only the reproductive and somatic impulses. To be used as a main reference, Donald E. Brown compiled an extensive list of transhistorical human universals that emerge cross-culturally (1991). Brown concurs with Carroll in that mortality salience –and the consequent need to explore and converse on the topic of death– is a central determinant of the outlook on human life. An event (such as the death of a beloved one) might suddenly make an individual aware of their own pending doom, triggering existential questions on life and death (1991; 1999). The climax of Passage consists of either the female character’s death, or the main avatar’s own end. The occurrence is shocking to the player and a game that was initially about life, life choices and passing time, eventually becomes a game about life under constant threat of death. There is no life without a looming end.

Frank Kermode published a widely acclaimed study of the fictional end in The Sense of an Ending, treating stories which evolve around the death of the character or the world and solving the “aesthetic and philosophical enigmas” that surround these fictions (1966). In his observation, the peripeteia (or climax) of a story is the moment that the reader’s expectations will be –in the best of cases– splendidly challenged and overturned, thus engaging the reader even further into the narrative. Surprisingly in line with the evolutionary view on human nature[2], Kermode relates the falsification of our expectations to the need to find new, unexplored pathways in the solution of a problem – neatly conforming to our cognitive mental mapping and the simulatory properties of literature (1966).

Being a game, Passage makes the player look for a final goal that will bring around the game’s end and clarify its purpose; the goal is a conventional feature of the genre. The sudden death of one of the characters therefore comes as a great surprise, since games, in general, do not insert random events that were not, in some form or other, triggered by the gamer. In the ‘single’ scenario, the character’s death is also the end of the story – the climax and the ending become one. But in the ‘couple’ scenario, the female’s death becomes the climax as expectations are readjusted and the player begins to suspect what might become of the avatar. The effect on the avatar is also greatly visible through his subsequent shuffling, portraying him as old, vulnerable and afflicted. The threatening knowledge is still fresh, however, and unsure. In other words, the expectation of having, as is typical for games, considerable power over in-game events, is falsified by the sudden and unpreventable death of the characters. Furthermore, the second death follows the first closely enough to retain the gamer in a moment of doubt, where expectations have been readjusted but are still in dire need of confirmation.

The purpose of such a narrative device is to shock the player back into himself. As Kermode puts it, “[t]he more daring the peripeteia, the more we may feel that the work respects our sense of reality” (1966, p. 18). Rejecting the naïve outcome (which confirms expectations) by inserting an event that upsets the balance of our world order may be as pleasurable in its ‘reality-factor’ as it is terrifying in the possibility of its existence (Kermode, 1966). It is a call-back to the crude reality around us – positioning the human central and in contract to his environment. It enables what Carroll observed in many other texts: a “self-affirmation of Being-In-The-World” (1995, p. 121).

The idea of the self is not only a human universal, but also a cognitive domain. It seems to be an indispensable precondition for goal-directed behavior (Brown, 1991; Carroll, 1999). Passage, in order to transmit a meaningful message on life choices and the inescapability of mortality, heightens the player’s awareness of his own position in life – “[p]art of the goal [of the game], in fact, is to get you to reflect on the choices that you make while playing” (Rohrer, 2007b, par. 9). Personal choice reflects back to individuality, and here we see individual variation is not only a crucial component to our survival, but also one that busies our minds. Through the game, we “realize our deeper nature in vividly subjective ways” (Carroll, 1999, p. 171), and therefore also how others may have just as vividly subjective feelings of their own. In general, this property contributes to one’s personal and social development – by enhancing an understanding of oneself and of other’s individualities, or, in other words, by creating and complementing appropriate mental models and maps. A crucial feature that underpins this aim is Passage’s cyclicity, which will be elaborated on below.

Passage’s medium- and culture-related peculiarities

Skeptics of biopoetical readings may reproach its dogmatic generality when it composes its analysis of a phenomenon. However, the hasty setting aside in Darwinian criticism of culture and time-specific phenomena is a misstep for the serious analyst. Literary representations –and art in general– is highly dependant on the Zeitgeist, the socio-cultural position of the author and the means (call it technology) available (Carroll, 1995). There is no contradiction in terms, since the theme is universal but its approach, the tone and the formal organization of a text may highly vary from period to period. The very capacity of the human being to rework previous material into novelty lies in the cognitive fluidity that is a result of evolutionary development and which is an elemental precondition for modern culture (Carroll, 1999).

Passage’s medium, therefore, must get its due attention. Being an online game, it is the product of contemporary technology, to name a few: the computer, the internet and the video console. We have learned to incorporate this new genre (for the digital game is quite recent from its non-digital predecessors) into our system of narrative structures – yielding the set of expectations that accompany it as briefly mentioned before. Yet Passage also contradicts the game-conventions by, for instance, eliminating a tangible goal. As discussed above, this elimination serves the purpose of the game’s message well; the decision has well thought-over rationale.

The graphic design has, in similar ways, an equal impact upon the reception of the game. First of all, the highly pixelated world is reminiscent of the first Atari games that were marketed to a large public. We could speak of a ‘game atavism’; a throwback to very early and primitive forms of the digital game. What happened is a reduction of futile detail so that the addressed themes can truly emerge from the game – there is no redundancy of visual effects, only features which help in our understanding of the avatar’s situation. These would include the blurry future becoming the blurry past, the constrained visibility of the avatar’s environment and the music’s cyclic rhythm and smoothing melancholic tune.

However, these features, together with the smallish size of the play screen, are also culturally determined. The long stroke that represents a life is linear – the time perception at the level of the character is linear. Linking back to the typical beginning-peripeteia-end plot discussion, Kermode does specify that attributing such an importance to the ending of a story is typical for rectilinear accounts (Kermode, 1966). In the linear time perspective, nothing reoccurs and all actions are, consequently, irrevocable – contrary to the cyclic, where everything is bound to pass and come again. One is responsible for one’s own life and must answer for it accordingly. There is also a sense of progression, going from ‘less’ to ‘more’. As the reader might have guessed, this view is fundamentally a Christian one, though it is now the standard adopted in Western culture and many modern concepts are inseparably attached to it, such as evolution theory, creativity in art, originality, uniqueness and the importance of personality[3] (Staal, 1986).

So the game’s setup reflects the linear perspective inherent to Western culture[4], but it would be wrong to remain within the character’s viewpoint, which is at first merged with the player’s. These two viewpoints will diverge as soon as the character dies and the scene fades away into the black ‘Passage’ title screen. Surprisingly, the game is programmed to start anew at that moment, blurring the distinction between the beginning and the end. As a consequence, we witness the creation of a microstructure (the world of the character within one round) and a macrostructure (the audience’s experience throughout many rounds of the game).

The linearity is actually present in the microstructure, while the macrostructure is more cyclic of nature. The player can replay the game and make different choices, but the overall happenings will simply reoccur. This is in line with the cyclic time notion: whatever details differentiate one cycle from the other, they eventually come down to the same main happenings (Staal, 1986) – in Passage, the death of the character. Finally, we here see a marriage of culture and human universal: the linear perspective is familiar to the user, so that a ‘Being-in-the-World’ feeling will be ensured and secure the message’s transmission. But the cyclic macroscopic perspective allows for the testing of various possibilities, playing with choices and imagining what a) fits best to your personality and b) how others might take a different path. So finally, the cyclic highlights the tenacity and collectivity of the universals; as Frits Staal puts it, it is het boventijdelijke, the ‘supra-timeness’, that is given centrality to in a cyclic perspective of time (Kermode, 1966).

Conclusion

A biopoetical reading does the following: it postulates on human nature, cultural ecology and differences in individuality, and subsequently applies the theories on literary representations, based on the fact that literature has an ordering influence over the information human beings are confronted to in their environment. From a biopoetical framework, Passage is a game that strongly addresses human universals such as life, death, individuality, decision-making and the urge to tend to somatic and reproductive impulses. Such features attract and retain large audiences effectively for the universality of the themes.

This essay, however, did not only aim at validating the biopoetical framework, but also at testing its capacity to cope with cultural variables. I concluded that with the particularities of its medium and cultural representations of early 21^st century society, Passage was a good case of collaboration between universals and time-specific notions: the latter allow the first to come into fuller expression. To give but one discussed example: the combination of rectilinear and cyclic time notions enabled the in-game representation of life and death that is both accurate to the user’s feel and flexible enough to allow re-play. Further research elaborating on this interactivity may want to delve further into other notions deepened by Carroll, such as the concept of the viewpoint. But all in all, Passage’s hybridity of genre, of universals and of cultural artifices is most outstanding and the biopoetical approach is a valid and helpful way to approach the work without limiting its potential.

[1] A word of warning may do Carroll justice: this section is but a very brief, humble and selective rendering of his theory. Please refer to his works for a fuller account of the actual workings and deep structure of literature.

[2] One must remind oneself of the humanities’ dissociation from the life sciences – Kermode wrote his book in the mid 60s, when literary criticism was strictly separated from biology and evolutionary theory. Kermode’s assessment, which he keeps subtle nonetheless, was quite daring.

[3] For an extended discussion on why there concepts do not find the same expression in cylcic time perspectives, see Frits Staal’s essay on cyclic and rectilinear time notions (1986).

[4] Jason Rohrer, the creator, is American.

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Walpurgis Night

a single finitude...

The sexual equivalent of communism is probably ejaculation. The ultimate eschatological destination of the political Homo Erectus. An orgasm, single, yet cataclysmic in its pervasiveness, with an intensity of a total implosion, an inverse Big Bang…
It is there that hedonists would discover their messianism, the de-finite pleasure, the pleasure of a single finitude, The Second Cumming…

And, irony is inevitable again.
Marx, Capital’s disobedient bastard, is Vatsyayana’s peculiar kin. The End ‘borrows’ the instrument from its favorite companion – reproduction; from the “accursed share” of capitalist accumulation and the art of prolongation – Kamasutram.

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Chimpanzee coalitions - a form of proto-sociality?

In his Psychological Altruism, Evolutionary Origins and Moral Rules (1998), Philip Kitcher gives a novel account of the evolutionary development of the human capacity to form altruistic valuations (to adjust preferences on the basis of the perception of other organism’s desires). According to Kitcher, human beings have a ‘fragile’ capacity for altruism, the origins of which are not be located in a pre-historical form of “Prisoner’s Dilemma”, but in a more ‘trivial’ development: the dynamics of forming alliances and coalitions among pre-social animals. To account for the development of proto-sociality, we should not imagine a hypothetical scenario of individual organisms calculating fitness benefits, a scenario which, Kitcher claims, presupposes a stable “pool of possible partners”. On the contrary, we should look to explain the formation of that very ‘pool’, the minimal form of animal sociality. That formation, he speculates, can be explained by pre-existing dispositions to form altruistic evaluations towards animals with whom the agent has a history of interactions.

Kitcher rejects the relevance of evolutionary game theory for the formation of these alliances on two grounds: a) the presupposition of a stable “pool of partners” and b) the absence of reason to think “our evolutionary ancestors and relatives had the cognitive resources to find an [ESS] solution (p.298). But, these objections, as we will see, are based on a cartoon version of evolutionary game theory (EGT). Above all, EGT does not by any means presuppose an existing and stable “partner pool” for evolving social interactions. All that EGT presupposes is a history of social interactions with various non-kin animals, a presupposition shared by Kitcher’s own view. The existence of a stable pool is, in that sense, only a theoretical (calculative) tool which is to be understood as an abstraction modeling the frequency of the agent’s encounters with other animals. On the other hand, if we want to explain the formation of the very minimal level of sociality (the alliances and cooperations), Kitcher’s account is by no means superior to EGT. Namely, game theory emphatically does not presuppose the conscious calculation of fitness costs and benefits by pre-social animals. On the contrary, the selection of a superior ‘strategy’ is a result not of intentional conscious manipulation, but of blind processes of natural selection. The initial diversity of genetic structures producing various psychological dispositions is slowly eliminated in favor of a higher frequency of the more fortuitously superior adaptations. At no point is a proto-Sartrian agent, complex enough to calculate the balances of costs and benefits, presented in the picture. The selection of a superior strategy is simply the product of the accidental superiority of certain phenotypic properties. In that sense, the evolution of a behavior that maximizes the reproductive fitness of the individual is simply a consequence of the diverse selection pressures, even if that behavior is the formation of “dispositions to construct psychologically altruistic valuations”.

Philip Kitcher owes us an account of why the formation of the disposition to form altruistic valuations cannot be explained in game-theoretical terms (moreover, he need to specify an alternative mechanism, not only sketch a general account). Eo ipso, he owes us an explanation of why these dispositions don’t fit in the general Hobbes-Macchiaveli view propounding the omnipresence of selfishness. If the psychological altruism can be explained by an EGT model, just what exactly is really altruistic about “psychological altruism”?

Related topics:

Valid and Cheap Individualism

David Copp and the Darwinian Dilemma

Robert J. Richards and the Naturalistic Fallacy

“A conformist, I live, I try to live, by imitation, by respect for the rules of the game, by horror of originality… It is because we are all impostors that we endure each other. The man who does not consent to lie will see the earth shrink under his feet: we are biologically obliged to the false.” – E.C.

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Tim Bayne

I just came back from a Tim Bayne lecture at the faculty of philosophy. Bayne is a researcher at Oxford University, working in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Action. The topic for the talk, appropriately, was at the intersection of those two fields. Bayne is interested in the phenomenology of action; or more precisely – in the phenomenology of agentive experience. How does it feel like to act in a world? Is there a core to agentive experience, a structure which we can isolate and whose properties we can determine, identify and classify? Moving rather swiftly through these main issues, he identified a propositional core of the experience of agency, something on the lines of this:

“I experience myself as performing X”

Isolating a core propositional content of the experience of agency, Bayne moved to the central question. Namely, what is the direction of fit of agentive experiences? Are experiences of action thetic, having mind-to-world direction of fit, or are those experiences telic, possessing the opposite direction of fit? In other words, are experiences of action belief-like, having veridicality conditions (e.g. I have a certain belief concerning the most successful football club in England; a belief which can be true or false)? Or, are they desire-like, having satisfaction conditions (e.g. I want Arsenal to be the champion of England; and that desire can be fulfilled or frustrated)?
Can we say that the experience of our own action has solely veridicality conditions (I belief I am moving my arm, but I can be mistaken about that)? Or is experience of agency all about satisfaction conditions (I want to move my arm, and that desire can either be fulfilled or frustrated)?

Bayne moved quickly through the main arguments and considered both views, before, not surprisingly, presenting a compromise: experiences of action are both thetic and telic; they have both veridicality and satisfaction conditions.  These types of experiences, he claims, have the form of Pushmi-Pullju representations, borrowing the term from Millikan (and, of course, Dr. Doolitle). Pushmi-Pullju representations (PPR’s) have both a descriptive and a directive function; as in the performative “This session is adjourned!” Bayne believes that the PPR’s can help us analyze experiences of action, while not limiting the analysis strictly to either veridical or satisfaction conditions. Namely, the experience of action is not strictly thetic, since the experience of a movement as not corresponding to the belief is a failure of the action in toto (if I experience my arm as moving without my control, then I simply fail to act). And, vice versa, the experience is not simply telic, since I necessarily have beliefs about my moving arm.

Pushmi-Pullju Representations?

Having in mind Bayne’s sketchy portrayal of the model and the complexity of the topic, I will reserve my judgment for now, but I have several things in mind (reflecting more or less the questions posed to Bayne):

a)      As a devout follower of the 4E approach, I feel an almost intimate connection between PPR’s and enactivism. Namely, if perception does not consist solely in sensation, but also in movement, then an account of the perception of action can easily combine the thetic form of sensation and the telic form of movement, resulting in something like this:

perception  =  sensation (thetic)  +  movement (telic)  =  PPR

In other words, the experience of the action is an action in itself.

b)      But, doesn’t then the perception of action constitute a new action, subsequent to the original one? Isn’t the temporal diachronicity a necessary condition of the sensori-motor coupling central to the 4E approach?

c)       On a slightly different note, a question arises about the propositional content of the experience. Namely, to what extent is the ‘I’ supposed to be present in the content? Isn’t the dominant lesson of 4E precisely the absence of the ‘I’ in the experience of direct coping? Reacting to this, Bayne seems to go for a “small I”, not a full-fledged representation of self-consciousness, but something like a universal point of reference in action space.

d)      But, then again, how is this “small I” to be propositionally determined? And, wouldn’t a determination of an ‘I’ in the propositional core of the experience lead to an inability to differentiate modes of conscious experience? (surely the ‘presence’ of the I in the content can vary dependent on the particular character of the experience?)

e)      Another concern lies in the determination of the direction of fit of PPR’s. That is, if there is both a thetic and a telic component to the experience of agency, does that mean that the direction is dependent on the form, content and context of the particular action? If so, what are the parameters of determination? (What does the subject do?) Etc.

But, of course, the major concern is much simpler. Namely, even though Bayne is quite happy to leave out phenomenal content and focus on propositional form, the question still remains – is this really phenomenology of action? Does phenomenology really end with the isolation of a propositional core of the experience of agency? To use an old and somewhat worn-out phrase, is this really what experiencing oneself as acting is like?

Related topics:

The Frenzy of the Reflection