" "soul" is simply the collected affects of glitches, errors, human inconsistancy and distraction"
The above quote from shrog made me incandescent with rage yesterday but I've calmed down a bit now (I’m just fuming).
I can't believe that any musician that has played trad at sessions (or any music any ware) could so completely misunderstand the reality of musical performance.
Have the absolute-relativists, solipsists and strong AI myth disciples managed to corrupt some of us here in this wonderful little garden of regular, practical, and social music making.
You can either be practical or religious. It's up to you.
But I am reminded of that geezer in Victorian times who tried to measure the soul. He put the beds of dying people on scales, and at the precise moment of death, expected the bed to get a little lighter.
It is a reasonable statement from the point of view of the theoretically ideal classical performance. It assumes a Platonic reality which the musician is trying to achieve, but cannot because of his human limitations.
Of course not all music is played against such an ideal.
Note also that he said a program could fool the naive, which is a bit of a tautology. The easily fooled can be easily fooled.
Ostrich Feather's research would come in handy for creating such a program as it relates to Irish music, still. . .
I think you've misrepresented him. Here's what he said:
" I've heard the London Philharmonic Orchestra live. They played flawlessly. I was extremely bored and very dissapointed. What you call "soul" is simply the collected affects of glitches, errors, human inconsistancy and distraction. When someone plays something that really moves you, you cannot tell whether they're thinking about misty meadows or worrying about this year's tax returns. "
Why are you getting upset? Or are you zis...artiste... that has ze FIRE I SAY FIRE driving me to explore ze very depths of ze human experience...
And I'm speaking as the survivor of many a good (and bad) session.
My understanding of musical performance has absolutely nothing to do with this topic. It matters about as much as the colour of my hair.
This is about understanding human perception. Knowing what makes a performance feel wrong to someone. What is it that makes someone think that a computer generated this, but a human generated that?
Humans are no different from anything else in this physical world. Everything works according to rules. Every effect has a cause. Although the things you do seem unpredictable and the causes of your actions (or variations in action) seem indeterminable, they are not. Humans are machines, just like computers are machines.
Humans play music differently from computers for only two reasons:
1) Humans are analogue and computers are digital.
2) Humans work within the world around them and are affected by it, while computers work in the isolation of their component parts.
That's it. No other reasons. It's as simple as that.
Simulating outside influences on an isolated system or simulating analogue behaviour on a binary system is very difficult, but not impossible.
So why don't we have such programs? I tried to say this before, but Bren said it much better than I ever could:
"People play music because they enjoy it, not to achieve some predetermined end.
Having a computer do it for you takes away the enjoyment, no matter how good or "soulful" the music resulting is."
Eugh, I wince at getting involved in what promises to be a good dialogue, but, I don't think that you can actually call a human a machine. Every person has a thousand different influences upon them so that there is nothing remotely close to standardization. You could put 50 people into the exact same circumstances and you would have 50 different reactions. Or you could put the same person through the same event more than once and their reaction would still change. Nothing mechanical there.
You commented that people work within the world and are affected by it, that's what keeps us from being machines. Everyone is going to react differently to everything whereas a computer will react the same way to the same thing every time unless alternately programmed.
And I don't think that you can call human reactions to the world simple or the differences you described simple at all. So while we could or can simulate all the stuff you mentioned every computer would have to be programmed differently and even then the reactions wouldn't be the same as human reactions.
What an incredibly reductionist set of suppositions. "Humans are no different from anything else in the physical world"...apart from the fact that they possess self-reflective consciousness. Well, ok, in that respect they aren't that much different from a handful of other higher primates, and dolphins, whales and maybe elephants. but that's quite a small minority compared to "anything else in the physical world." As for computers, even a simple Drosophila has more complex processing ability than the most advanced computers.
Now I am confused . . .
You said : humans and computers are both machines
I said: No, not exactly,
Danny said: No way,
You said: we agree.
Yep, definitely confused. I agree that perfection and soul aren't the same thing, though I also believe that a perfect performance can be soulful. I agree that people play music to enjoy it not for perfection. But I in no way agree that humans and computers exist on the same level of machine-ness. I'm just not buying it. . .
I meant that computers play music differently to humans because humans are too complex. You agreed: "Every person has a thousand different influences upon them so that there is nothing remotely close to standardization." The "standardization" in a computer system comes from the fact that it is binary.
If you increase the number of variables, you increase the complexity of the system. If you increase it enough, people become unwilling to see it is physics any more. Suddenly it becomes metaphysical.
This is where we disagree:
"You could put 50 people into the exact same circumstances..." Or "you could put the same person through the same event more than once..."
No you can't. You cannot reset every single thing about a moment to be exactly the way it was before. With a computer we can, because we can store the initial value of every variable somewhere, and go back to those settings very easily. As you said yourself, there are too many things influancing humans. You can never recreate exactly the same situation.
Danny, self-reflective consciousness is emergant behaviour - a complex result formed by a finite set of rules.
I didn't mean to reset the situation I meant to expose them to the same set of circumstances. If 50 people all witness a murder there will be 50 different stories of what happened and 50 different reactions to what happened. If a person is in a car accident once and then in another car accident their reaction will be different each time. My entire point was that people's reactions cannot be controlled - and by same events and circumstances I meant that you could expose them to the same set of variables.
But why can it not be controlled? Because you are talking about putting a similar person (the same person a day later is not exactly the same any more) into a similar situation (similar, but different, accident). You are NOT reseting all the variables, which is the ONLY reason you are getting different results every time.
But to get back to the original argument...
We are not talking about getting a computer to pick up a fiddle and play it with feeling. We are talking about getting the computer to make a speaker move back and forth with enough unpredictability (and most importantly, the right kind of unpredictability) to sound like a recording of a human playing.
The computer does not have to feel anything to be able to do this. The listener need only get the impression that feeling was involved. Or consiousness was involved.
OK, Shrog, I take it you mean from your perspective consciousness is an epiphenomenon of brain activity. At least you've qualified that. I think we're going to have to agree to differ. Although I still view your standpoint as ultimately reductionist. But as someone with some scientific training I can't argue with that *from* a scientific point of view, where maybe you see this as a kind of Occam's razor. But in a world where scientist can't agree whether photons are particles or waves, where an electron only has a "probability" of being at a particular point in space (Schrodinger equation), or where in trying to pin point the location or velocity of a subatomic particle, by so doing you change one of those (Heisenberg's), I feel it's difficult to be certain about *bigger* things, especially something so nebulous as consciousness.
If i'm not mistaken (and that happens rarely), the premise of the movie 21 Grams was to the effect that people lose exactly 21 grams of weight upon death. it be the soul escapin to the starry beyond!
as to the original post, we might want to consider the difference between the internal and exernal perspectives on ITM. A scientist could study ITM and come up with X theory regarding Y aspect of the music and tradition. X theory could even be considered true from an objective scientific perspective. But that would not or at least should not nvalidate the internal aspect of the music or the meaning of the music and tradition as understood subjectively from those who consider themselves participants.
Pied Piper, seems like you are railing against some kind of Reductionism. And reductionists do exist in all kinds of forms. US culture seems to be in the midst of a reductionistic attack of the variety that seeks to reduce all questions (social, political, ethical, scientific) to religion--and a particular brand at that. in any case, however, it is not clear that Shrog is one of them with regard to ITM Shrog: are you a reductionist?
all that to say that "soul" can be legitimately be understood from both an internal and external perspective. either way, aint gonna stop me from composing my own new tunes and subjecting them on hapless victems. Whaaaah ha ha hahaaaaa! (although it can objectively be said that *my* tunes are awesome!)
No, I would not call myself a reductionist.
Unfortunately, I have to go - late for session (I'm leaving my computer behind though).
But before I go, I HAVE to say how happy I am that Irish music, computers, Occam's razor, probability, Schrodinger and Heisenberg have all appeared in one discussion.
hmmm, fritjof capra. haven't read him. gonna make a note to do so. i'm stealing my brilliant ideas from Jurgen Habermas, more or less. although Habermans has been accused of a less common type of reductivism which involves reducing all questions (religious, scientific, social) to ethics/morality.
Hey keep talking lads. Soon you'll have completely figured out how the human brain works and you'll be famous! Shrog, while you're at it, can you tell us how come there is life on earth?
I thought we'd agreed that, since scientists have analysed the biochemical cascades in human synapses and found the brain to be, not just a chemical memory machine, but a limited-field generator for a quantum-state standing wave, that *that's* what the mind/soul is.
Or have I been confusing my science fiction novels with reality again?
omigod - you invoked Habermas! That's low. My ears haven't been assaulted with that name since third year philosophy! Now I'm going to have go huddle in a dark corner until the oppressive brain fog forever associated with that name dissipates!
Hey Q, I read that in one of those pseudo-science new-agey Ruprt Sheldrake-kind of books a while back. Don't think THAT would pass the Occam's razor test, but a neat bit of cosmic concept juxtapositioning, right enough.
Well *I* read it about an hour and a half ago in Dan Simmon's novel Ilium (which somehow manages to combine hard science fiction, interesting academic analyses of Proust and Shakespeare's sonnets and The Tempest, with cognitive philosophy, the Iliad and Jules Verne). It's a rollicking read so far!
21 grams is approximate weightloss at the point of death of a traditional musician (or a player of traditional music indeed), due to the tunes so meticulously collected flying back to the collective ether.
It seems pretty obvious.
btw, Shrog - tell everyone at the slow sesh and at A Touch Of Madness hi from me and I miss you all terribly but not to worry cos the folks here aren't as mean as vicious as we thought they'd be
sorry Q, i generally avoid throwin philosophy around, but this thread prompted a gratuitous sally into the madness. If could buy you a pint to to calm the nerves i would; god knows the number of pints i've had myself for that very reason.
the philosopher--and let us call him "H"--is a contemporary german philosopher. and contemporary in, like, this bloke is still alive too! unlike his Anglo counterpart, Rawls, who recently passed away. he pontificates on ethics, social and political philosophy. he is generally associated with what's known as 'discourse ethics' which has to do with the way thru dialog people come to (or attempt to come to) agree on principles of conduct (yeah, fat chance!). i could say more......but...i see you are all making your way for the door....
Q- yes you have. As far as anyone can tell as of now, quantum states are only involved in the mind as much as they are with any other matter (which is quite a bit, but you don't notice it).
As for the rest of you, I think it's the word 'machine' that gets the hackles up. You want magic, whether from a god or from new-agey wotsits. You don't WANT the mind to be just something happening in ordinary matter.
It seems that most people have misunderstanding of what the "soul" really is and it's origins in reference to music. Somewhere along the way the definiton of "spirit" and "soul" have been confused in popular culture.
The "soul" is the embodiment of the spirit within the physical shell (i.e. spirit + body = soul).
In music the term was first associated with black slaves in early America. Their music was soulful because it expressed of both strong spiritual convictions and physical hardships.
I was thinking of issuing a challenge in which all of you state your positions WITHOUT using words of over two syllables. Or maybe three. I'm not without mercy.
Yes, Zina's right - let's get back to basics. Brendan, how do you think we trad musicians should reconcile supposedly epiphenomenic qualia with a shared perception of what we regard as the music. Where *does* the concept of soul fit into all of this? And, while we're at it... what is the correct setting on my washing machine for synthetic colours anyway?
dAle, that there could be construed as a Reduction and we don't wanna give Pied Piper any more headaches. But you would be in line with a lot of contemporary philosophy especially with one philosopher i'll only indentify as W who would agree with Zina that all this metaphysical talk about "Soul" is just a strange language game (Q: that's a hint) that philosophers play that amounts to not much more than nailing jello to a tree. but sure can be fun can't it! i picture green jello.
Because fiddle boy, this is The Session dot org and just like a real session people are here to have a bit of fun, not just to have purely academic discussions.
I don't remember Wittgenstein being any fun at all, frankly
But now that we've conclusively proved to everyone here gathered how clever we all are, I'm going to end with a quote from my dear friend Immanuel (and we all know what a Kant he was).
"Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck."
and I'm certainly not going cross it in my little rowboat... so I'm off down the pub instead.
Amazing everyone has mised my point; I'll try once more.
What I'm objecting to is the idea that when I play a tune with 100% comitment and my conciousness is in it people listening cannot tell. In other words it's soul in the music is an illusion of the listener.
What an amazing response - 65 so far and it's only Day 1! I haven't time to read them all - some serious practising required this evening - so maybe my view is already there. Soul to me is the draíocht in the music which separates it from just being just a collection of notes or even a "clever" collection with lots of ornamentation, etc. It's not too easy to describe but musicians such as Tommy Peoples, Tony McMahon, Joe Cooley, Matt Molloy, John Carty,etc seem to have it in abundance.
PP, I think I see your original point. It seems to me that Shrog isn't allowing for intentional or semi-intentional variations in how a tune is played, but only for howlers. Inconsistency can be a deliberate act, it's not merely due to error or inattention. Now I don't think his example is the best for comparison to ITM; among other things, classical music standards of musicianship place a much higher emphasis on artificial perfection than trad standards do. But frankly, the biggest disjunct that I see in his comparison is this: I've known plenty of orchestra musicians who couldn't care less about the music they're playing in concert, except insofar as they want to play it without any noticeable errors so that the conductor and/or the critics don't whack them upside the head later. It's a job, and like any job some people who do it love it so much they can't see straight and a lot of others are using it to fill their stomachs and keep their roof watertight whilst pursuing their actual passions in off hours. Trad isn't like that for most players; unless you're in a band, and most people in trad bands are not as straitjacketed as most classical musicians, trad IS the actual passion you pursue in your off hours. (Besides, in a trad band you're less likely to have to play piece after piece of ghastliness to keep some nerk of a conductor happy, and thus lose your musical will to live. And no, I don't want to be deluged with stories about keeping some nerk of a bandmate happy; the issues of power and control are not comparable.)
But that's only part of the picture. Another and critical part is the collection of variations and nuances that a player puts into their playing of a tune either deliberately or as a result of their emotional interaction with the tune itself. To me it's *those* differences that amount to what might be termed "soul" in a musical context. (And no, I don't think it has any particular relevance to the theological issues that have been pulled in by their back hair. Trying to insist on an equation based on etymology is like bog-hopping, especially given the variances of meaning in modern English, and I think that particular equation lands any reasonable discussion right in the muck.) Although I'm sure that a trad player could turn out a "soulless", mechanical rendition of a tune, trad standards place a very high value on the process described in another thread under the phrase "making a tune your own". Part of "making a tune your own" is learning how to get far enough inside the tune to play it in different ways according to things like mood, what tunes you've set it with, and other factors. Although happy accidents do occur, often the process instead involves volition.
Having listened to a number of trad musicians play tunes in a recording studio and then seen them perform the same tunes live, I have to say I think Shrog is way off base. I think I see how he got there (after all, I also used to be a classical musician in an orchestra), but he's left out two perfectly huge pieces of the puzzle: the human ability to choose and act on that choice, and the human ability to interact with something nonhuman based on emotional attachment to or emotional response to that nonhuman thing. And those very puzzle pieces are, I think, the key to the whole discussion.
There is indeed a puzzle here, and whenever confronted with such a puzzle, I like to go for the top corners first, because they're usually blue and easier to find.
pied, i think we also run aground on the issue of intention and outcomes, and the lack of necessary connection between them. i can intend (or have a committment to) world peace but that don't necessary produce world peace. i can intend to play the sexiest most coolist super duper soul filled tune ever but that don't necessary translate into beans (unless the tune was composed by me and then its a given; or played by zina after she's done red jello shots). conversely, the fact the a tune or performace has soul doesn't necessarily mean it was intended to be that way. how 'bout we knaw on that narlie metaphysical bone. Going once....going twice...
I think whether a player has soul at all is subjective anyway. A musical performance might move some listeners and completely bore others. Can there be a standard quantifiable measurement of soul?
I don't play well enough to play with "soul", jello shots or no, red or orange; I play to get through the goddam tune from beginning to end without trainwrecking. I'm not there to communicate my innermost feelings and heartfelt meanings, I'm there to have fun with my friends and those who might become friends. I'm a crap player. Yet plenty of people have heard what soul in my playing they want to hear; it has nothing to do with me. I just play it as best as I can so not to annoy those who play better than me. Fini.
I think playing with soul mainly means being so familiar and comfortable with a tune that the contours are hand-rubbed and polished like a wooden handrail and it’s almost effortless to glide through it.
I'm finally with you, Pied.
So you can play your guts out and you think no-one notices. Sometimes. Other times people are a bit too much all ears and every note is more precious to them than to the player.
But yeah, only you know how much soul you put into your rendition of a set.
So, also taking on board someone above's definition of soul vis a vis spirit, getting back to our hijack (:-})....I prefer the more experiential "definition" posited by Hinduism. When you're a baby, you think you are the only thing that has a "soul" or is alive (not interested in an infant's definition of soul) because that's all you know. But then soon after, because you have it, you think everything is alive..teddies, dollies, etc. So you extend your soul to include these inanimate objects, because they have smiles sown onto their faces. As you grow up you learn to distiguish. But essentially the Eastern view is more personal experienced based. Personal experience based religious experience is not not covered by Western Occam's Razor type definitive scientific philosophy, and it all gets discussed in abstracts, which are not human experienced based philosophical realities.
And getting back to Pied's point, only you as an individual player knows how well, or rather how much of your self/soul you put into that last reel you played. but as it is in a medium which other people can understand/communicate with, so those who are seriously listening will be with you.....
....and btw, in case you think they're not really listening, but just being nice to you, I can't remember where right off, but deffo in the Frontal lobes, but there are a group of pyramidal neurons recently discovered that fire off only when their "owner" is "empathising" with another person (or dog, cat, dolphin, etc.) that is undergoing pain/stress/happiness, etc.
Psychopaths don't have them, that's why they can easily shoot another person in the face.
Wandering, but hope it helps.
Ok, I appologise for this long essay, but this is my last contribution to this topic.
Sara G, you could not have misunderstood me more if you tried. You say "Shrog isn't allowing for intentional or semi-intentional variations in how a tune is played, but only for howlers." Where on earth do you get that from? You then say "Another and critical part is the collection of variations and nuances that a player puts into their playing of a tune either deliberately or as a result of their emotional interaction with the tune itself. To me it's *those* differences that amount to what might be termed "soul" in a musical context." Well, I hate to break it to you but it is exactly *those* differences that *I* am talking about too.
Pied Piper says: "What I'm objecting to is the idea that when I play a tune with 100% commitment and my consciousness is in it people listening cannot tell. In other words it's soul in the music is an illusion of the listener." I understand your objection, but don't mean it as harshly as it sounds. I'm not saying that people cannot tell that you are putting emotion into a tune, but rather that they do not know where that emotion comes from. And they don't need to know where it comes from for them to enjoy your rendition. Also, the listener is now part of the tune, as your performance mixes with his emotions, the result is not entirely under your control.
You have emotion, commitment and consciousness on one side. You have a means to express it: your music. The result is something that may move other people emotionally, spiritually, or whatever. It is impossible for the moved to know what the mover was thinking. Do you only play sad tunes when you are sad, or happy tunes when you are happy? No, you don't. You "conjure up" the emotion required for the performance from your experiences and memories. You are *performing* an emotion, which you may or may not actually be feeling at the time of the performance. (bad sentence) It's like acting. You know what the emotion feels like, and you use that knowledge to perform the tune, but you do not need to actually feel the emotion at the time of the performance. Unless you are a method actor, in which case you will make yourself miserable before performing sad tunes and ecstatic before performing happy tunes. It's all a bit too manic for me. I use the memories of feelings to put feeling into my playing. I'm not saying I do not feel anything while playing, I'm just more in control of those feelings. Can you imagine what would happen if I had to go through the trauma of a loved one's death every time I played the tune I wrote about the tragedy? No, I rather remember the feeling, allow myself to feel it to some extent, and use it to put emotion into the tune. And the "to some extent" refers to how emotional I feel like being about it, so it's not a constant.
So you put as little or as much of yourself as you want to into your performance, and once you've made the sound, it is out there. It is not yours any more. Someone hearing it may think "This guy was very sad when he played this, I bet his whole family was wiped out by a school of hammerhead sharks." But the truth is that you cannot know what the performer's emotional state was or what his past experiences were, you can only speculate. It is this separation between the listener and the player that is the key to this whole argument.
Shrog - these kind of misunderstandings happen all the time on this site. Thanks for clearing it up. I thought it was a thought provoking thread anyway.
DANNY MACKAY, that's Scheidt (*) about if Heisenberg's right, nithing can be determined on any scale. Pure new- age postmodernist tosh. Quantum effects are invisible at our scale, they even out, even for Zaphod Beeblebrox. We can do a lot of science before we need to throw up our hands and say anything goes.
If consciousness is NOT an emergent property of the activities of the brain, what DO you think it might be? Still looking for the Immortal Soul?
Hows about the guy I know, who lost his Soul after 5 minutes oxygen starvation? "He's" still "living", he can even say good morning if prompted, but his personality has gone. If the soul isn't personality, what determinable effects does it produce? If it is some paraphysical entity, how come it's sensitive to quite physically real chemicals?
Dear Paul Burke, You're welcome to believe that if you want. Quantum mechanical effects are nearly always invisible at our macro scale, being statistically evened out, but not always. There's always the occasional electron which might do a bit of tunnelling. And those ones might account for a lot. I didn't metaphorically throw up my hands and say anything goes. All I said was don't be absolutely 100% sure of any observation, or set of observations. That's why I'd take big n numbers for an experiment. Any other scientist will tell you the same.
Oh, and BTW, there are many minds far greater than mine and maybe even yours who ARE looking for the "immortal soul" or whatever, and some may have found it to their satisfaction. You read like you were cynical towards that aspiration.
Thank you Sara, you that's exactly what I was on about and thank you to every one else. The thread didn't go the way I expected it to but it's been an interesting ride.
Paul please don't mistake me for a wet new age apologist for irrationality, I to believe that the mind is an emergent property of the brain and that there are no minds without brains (physical embodiment), It's just using TM type machines as a model for organic intelligence I find unconvincing.
On Wednesday night I watched David Attenborough’s latest, which dealt with Arthropods and how they use silk. Of cause there was a bit about spider’s webs, with some great footage of spiders caught in the act. We don't usually consider spiders to be particularly intelligent but I think the chances of producing spider like inelegance with an algorithmic digital computer is a million to one; playing chess is easy (specially when you don't have to move the pieces or use eyes to see where they are) building a spiders web in the real world isn't. That’s not to say that non-organic machines can't do it merely that they will have to use similar processes as real spiders, incorporating lots of non-linearity embodied in a hardware analog system strongly coupled to it's environment.
If I'm right then it's somewhat ironic that Computer engineers have spent 60 years trying to persuade analog electronics to behave digitally, only to have to adopt its intrinsic "flaws" for computation.
"wet new age apologist for irrationality"
I like it. Truly.
Not sure why things should be so neatly tied up, just to say, what's rational about quantum mechanics? Yes, I know we've decided it doesn't always affect our reality but it is *a* reality.
And there is nothing intrinsically unscientific or irrational in questionning that brains are the only place where resides mind or consciousness. If that were so, let's go the other way...*where* in the brain is the seat of consciousness? Prefrontal cortex? Hippocampus? LGN? Heschl's? .....or it's all functioning as a complex unit? So does that whole unit include peripheral nerves and ganglia? Neurohumoral elements? Where does it end and non-mind begin? Your toenails?
The spider is quite possibly an organic machine, "merely" running a highly optimised program- google for "sphex behaviour". All a demostration of the fact that natural selection is cleverer than humans (but doesn't know it).
Where is consciousness? Where is the program in this computer? It would be a devil of a job to find it, if you didn't know how computers work, by examining the instantaneous states of the memory, disk drives, monitor output etc. In one sense you could say it isn't anywhere, it's something that happens in the computer.
Possible answer: consciousness doesn't have a place, it's a process. Processes are real: a flow is a description of a set of states of water, but a tsunami can kill people.
It can be shown that the process happens within the brain: people can have massive damage to many parts of the body without losing their human consciousness, but even a few minutes of rstricted blood flow to the brain destroys that consciousness irrevocably, even when the rest of the body is largely intact.
Ah, now we're onto something. All I'm saying is that "process" restricted to brains? You believe so, I don't. Not as we know it. Thanks for the discussion!
Ah the epiphysis and 5HT production. Thanks for that sharing that wisdom, Matt. BTW talking about computers, if anyone wants a good computer base deal, have a look at what Aldi have on offer for 750 quid: http://uk.aldi.com
no bad, eh?
Thanks Pied, good article. Only managed to read the introductory and concluding paras, and skimmed through the rest. Even freakier than what I've been saying!
All I'm saying is that "process" restricted to brains? You believe so, I don't.
Well, I gave a wee bit of evidence that it depends on the chemistry of the brain, and depends at least very much less on the state of other parts of the body. Have you any evidence to the contrary? Any evidence that it requires either a process in other parts of the body, or in some extracorporeal entity?
I think Edwards' paper is a muddle. He seems to require that somewhere in the brain there should be "you" watching what's going on, then goes from there to suggest where that "you" could be. That's begging the question.
I'm suggesting that it's both nowhere and everywhere.
Evidence to the contrary?
drugs can of course reduce or *increase* consciousness levels.
Patients who've undergone massive surgery eg amputations, organ or major tumour removal often present as deeply depressed, for a while. There is no obvious neurological resaon why they should but they do. So other body parts can influence mental state thus degree of consciousness. I can give you more, much more on this but it's probably tedious for everyone else. Email me for references if really interested.
Extracorporeal entity? Maybe more like intracorporeal .... ultimately self examining the nature of the gift of self reflective consciousness. Would I dare to sneer at a devout Muslim, or a committed Christian in prayer? A holy Saddhu in meditation or a Siberian shaman in trance, and ask them to present me with evidence of extracorporeal influence on their behaviour? not an evidence based belief system, but one based on personal experience. I can't say any more in that regard, other than try not to dismiss things which you have clearly not been engaged in.
Shrog, I was reading your original statement (both as Pied gave it and in the original thread, in case of misquote) exactly as written. Particularly the sentence:
"What you call "soul" is simply the collected affects of glitches, errors, human inconsistancy and distraction."
I simply didn't see anything in that statement that allowed for intentional variation. If you did, then fair enough, I misunderstood you; but I think with reason.
You're welcome, PP.
Much as I'd like to comment on the debate between Danny and Paul, I think I'd best leave that one go.
Soul
Soul
" "soul" is simply the collected affects of glitches, errors, human inconsistancy and distraction"
The above quote from shrog made me incandescent with rage yesterday but I've calmed down a bit now (I’m just fuming).
I can't believe that any musician that has played trad at sessions (or any music any ware) could so completely misunderstand the reality of musical performance.
Have the absolute-relativists, solipsists and strong AI myth disciples managed to corrupt some of us here in this wonderful little garden of regular, practical, and social music making.
Angry and sad
PP
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Pied Piper
Re: Soul
Exterminate! Exterminate!
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Dr. Dow
Re: Soul
You can either be practical or religious. It's up to you.
But I am reminded of that geezer in Victorian times who tried to measure the soul. He put the beds of dying people on scales, and at the precise moment of death, expected the bed to get a little lighter.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by llig leahcim
Re: Soul
The use of the word "soul" here is not referring to a religious concept but referring to the person’s embodiment of the tune, their presence in it.
PP
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Pied Piper
Re: Soul
Sadly, religion and soul often have nothing to do with each other.
That being said, practicality and soulfullnes are not mutually exclusive.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Andee
Re: Soul
Our modern scientists should try that experiment again using new weighing technology!
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Justintime
Re: Soul
It is a reasonable statement from the point of view of the theoretically ideal classical performance. It assumes a Platonic reality which the musician is trying to achieve, but cannot because of his human limitations.
Of course not all music is played against such an ideal.
Note also that he said a program could fool the naive, which is a bit of a tautology. The easily fooled can be easily fooled.
Ostrich Feather's research would come in handy for creating such a program as it relates to Irish music, still. . .
I demand a Turing Test.
KFG
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by KFG
Re: Soul
Music has no existence outside embodiment; it is always a physical process.
Music does not exist on a page it only exists while it is happening.
A set of instructions is not a platonic reality.
I suppose it's like believing that Shakespeare plays are corrupted by performance rather than brought to life.
In short,
Daft.
PP
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Pied Piper
Re: Soul
I think you've misrepresented him. Here's what he said:
" I've heard the London Philharmonic Orchestra live. They played flawlessly. I was extremely bored and very dissapointed. What you call "soul" is simply the collected affects of glitches, errors, human inconsistancy and distraction. When someone plays something that really moves you, you cannot tell whether they're thinking about misty meadows or worrying about this year's tax returns. "
Why are you getting upset? Or are you zis...artiste... that has ze FIRE I SAY FIRE driving me to explore ze very depths of ze human experience...
And I'm speaking as the survivor of many a good (and bad) session.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by LastToFinish
Re: Soul
I don't think I have.
I can't tell what some one playing is "thinking", but if their doing the music justice they are not "thinking" at all.
PP
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Pied Piper
Re: Soul
My understanding of musical performance has absolutely nothing to do with this topic. It matters about as much as the colour of my hair.
This is about understanding human perception. Knowing what makes a performance feel wrong to someone. What is it that makes someone think that a computer generated this, but a human generated that?
Humans are no different from anything else in this physical world. Everything works according to rules. Every effect has a cause. Although the things you do seem unpredictable and the causes of your actions (or variations in action) seem indeterminable, they are not. Humans are machines, just like computers are machines.
Humans play music differently from computers for only two reasons:
1) Humans are analogue and computers are digital.
2) Humans work within the world around them and are affected by it, while computers work in the isolation of their component parts.
That's it. No other reasons. It's as simple as that.
Simulating outside influences on an isolated system or simulating analogue behaviour on a binary system is very difficult, but not impossible.
So why don't we have such programs? I tried to say this before, but Bren said it much better than I ever could:
"People play music because they enjoy it, not to achieve some predetermined end.
Having a computer do it for you takes away the enjoyment, no matter how good or "soulful" the music resulting is."
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Shrog
Re: Soul
Eugh, I wince at getting involved in what promises to be a good dialogue, but, I don't think that you can actually call a human a machine. Every person has a thousand different influences upon them so that there is nothing remotely close to standardization. You could put 50 people into the exact same circumstances and you would have 50 different reactions. Or you could put the same person through the same event more than once and their reaction would still change. Nothing mechanical there.
You commented that people work within the world and are affected by it, that's what keeps us from being machines. Everyone is going to react differently to everything whereas a computer will react the same way to the same thing every time unless alternately programmed.
And I don't think that you can call human reactions to the world simple or the differences you described simple at all. So while we could or can simulate all the stuff you mentioned every computer would have to be programmed differently and even then the reactions wouldn't be the same as human reactions.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by musicfan
Re: Soul
What an incredibly reductionist set of suppositions. "Humans are no different from anything else in the physical world"...apart from the fact that they possess self-reflective consciousness. Well, ok, in that respect they aren't that much different from a handful of other higher primates, and dolphins, whales and maybe elephants. but that's quite a small minority compared to "anything else in the physical world." As for computers, even a simple Drosophila has more complex processing ability than the most advanced computers.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
Hmm, Danny I think we see this the same way. . .
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by musicfan
Re: Soul
My point exactly, musicfan. You are not actually arguing against me here.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Shrog
Re: Soul
Now I am confused . . .
You said : humans and computers are both machines
I said: No, not exactly,
Danny said: No way,
You said: we agree.
Yep, definitely confused. I agree that perfection and soul aren't the same thing, though I also believe that a perfect performance can be soulful. I agree that people play music to enjoy it not for perfection. But I in no way agree that humans and computers exist on the same level of machine-ness. I'm just not buying it. . .
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by musicfan
Re: Soul
I meant that computers play music differently to humans because humans are too complex. You agreed: "Every person has a thousand different influences upon them so that there is nothing remotely close to standardization." The "standardization" in a computer system comes from the fact that it is binary.
If you increase the number of variables, you increase the complexity of the system. If you increase it enough, people become unwilling to see it is physics any more. Suddenly it becomes metaphysical.
This is where we disagree:
"You could put 50 people into the exact same circumstances..." Or "you could put the same person through the same event more than once..."
No you can't. You cannot reset every single thing about a moment to be exactly the way it was before. With a computer we can, because we can store the initial value of every variable somewhere, and go back to those settings very easily. As you said yourself, there are too many things influancing humans. You can never recreate exactly the same situation.
Danny, self-reflective consciousness is emergant behaviour - a complex result formed by a finite set of rules.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Shrog
Re: Soul
I didn't mean to reset the situation I meant to expose them to the same set of circumstances. If 50 people all witness a murder there will be 50 different stories of what happened and 50 different reactions to what happened. If a person is in a car accident once and then in another car accident their reaction will be different each time. My entire point was that people's reactions cannot be controlled - and by same events and circumstances I meant that you could expose them to the same set of variables.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by musicfan
Re: Soul
But why can it not be controlled? Because you are talking about putting a similar person (the same person a day later is not exactly the same any more) into a similar situation (similar, but different, accident). You are NOT reseting all the variables, which is the ONLY reason you are getting different results every time.
But to get back to the original argument...
We are not talking about getting a computer to pick up a fiddle and play it with feeling. We are talking about getting the computer to make a speaker move back and forth with enough unpredictability (and most importantly, the right kind of unpredictability) to sound like a recording of a human playing.
The computer does not have to feel anything to be able to do this. The listener need only get the impression that feeling was involved. Or consiousness was involved.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Shrog
Re: Soul
OK, Shrog, I take it you mean from your perspective consciousness is an epiphenomenon of brain activity. At least you've qualified that. I think we're going to have to agree to differ. Although I still view your standpoint as ultimately reductionist. But as someone with some scientific training I can't argue with that *from* a scientific point of view, where maybe you see this as a kind of Occam's razor. But in a world where scientist can't agree whether photons are particles or waves, where an electron only has a "probability" of being at a particular point in space (Schrodinger equation), or where in trying to pin point the location or velocity of a subatomic particle, by so doing you change one of those (Heisenberg's), I feel it's difficult to be certain about *bigger* things, especially something so nebulous as consciousness.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
If i'm not mistaken (and that happens rarely), the premise of the movie 21 Grams was to the effect that people lose exactly 21 grams of weight upon death. it be the soul escapin to the starry beyond!
as to the original post, we might want to consider the difference between the internal and exernal perspectives on ITM. A scientist could study ITM and come up with X theory regarding Y aspect of the music and tradition. X theory could even be considered true from an objective scientific perspective. But that would not or at least should not nvalidate the internal aspect of the music or the meaning of the music and tradition as understood subjectively from those who consider themselves participants.
Pied Piper, seems like you are railing against some kind of Reductionism. And reductionists do exist in all kinds of forms. US culture seems to be in the midst of a reductionistic attack of the variety that seeks to reduce all questions (social, political, ethical, scientific) to religion--and a particular brand at that. in any case, however, it is not clear that Shrog is one of them with regard to ITM Shrog: are you a reductionist?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
I guess he is, albeit fairly eloquent about it. If you haven't already done so, read up some Modern Physics, or maybe some Fritjof Capra.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Rudall the time
all that to say that "soul" can be legitimately be understood from both an internal and external perspective. either way, aint gonna stop me from composing my own new tunes and subjecting them on hapless victems. Whaaaah ha ha hahaaaaa! (although it can objectively be said that *my* tunes are awesome!)
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
No, I would not call myself a reductionist.
Unfortunately, I have to go - late for session (I'm leaving my computer behind though).
But before I go, I HAVE to say how happy I am that Irish music, computers, Occam's razor, probability, Schrodinger and Heisenberg have all appeared in one discussion.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Shrog
hmmm, fritjof capra. haven't read him. gonna make a note to do so. i'm stealing my brilliant ideas from Jurgen Habermas, more or less. although Habermans has been accused of a less common type of reductivism which involves reducing all questions (religious, scientific, social) to ethics/morality.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
Hey keep talking lads. Soon you'll have completely figured out how the human brain works and you'll be famous! Shrog, while you're at it, can you tell us how come there is life on earth?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Dr. Dow
Re: Soul
Why?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Shrog
Re: Soul
I thought we'd agreed that, since scientists have analysed the biochemical cascades in human synapses and found the brain to be, not just a chemical memory machine, but a limited-field generator for a quantum-state standing wave, that *that's* what the mind/soul is.
Or have I been confusing my science fiction novels with reality again?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
no, Dow, the question *is*...Is there Intelligent life on Earth?
or
Is there life after birth?
:~}
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
omigod - you invoked Habermas! That's low. My ears haven't been assaulted with that name since third year philosophy! Now I'm going to have go huddle in a dark corner until the oppressive brain fog forever associated with that name dissipates!
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
Hey Q, I read that in one of those pseudo-science new-agey Ruprt Sheldrake-kind of books a while back. Don't think THAT would pass the Occam's razor test, but a neat bit of cosmic concept juxtapositioning, right enough.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
BTW, Matt, I was referring to your synapse theory.
WTF is Habermas?
Once, in among some student types (as I was myself at the time), one (whom I didn't know) turned up late, and said,
"sorry I'm late - I've been struggling with Heidegger"
"Who The fvck is SHE?" was my reply.
A bit harsh and boorish but it caused a laugh and shut up the pretentious little twit.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
sorry , tw@t is what I wrote
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
Well *I* read it about an hour and a half ago in Dan Simmon's novel Ilium (which somehow manages to combine hard science fiction, interesting academic analyses of Proust and Shakespeare's sonnets and The Tempest, with cognitive philosophy, the Iliad and Jules Verne). It's a rollicking read so far!
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
21 grams is approximate weightloss at the point of death of a traditional musician (or a player of traditional music indeed), due to the tunes so meticulously collected flying back to the collective ether.
It seems pretty obvious.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Ottery
Re: Soul
btw, Shrog - tell everyone at the slow sesh and at A Touch Of Madness hi from me and I miss you all terribly but not to worry cos the folks here aren't as mean as vicious as we thought they'd be
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
If it's the soul wot makes us lofty, shouldn't we get slightly heavier at the point of death?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by cuchulain54
Re: Soul
sorry Q, i generally avoid throwin philosophy around, but this thread prompted a gratuitous sally into the madness. If could buy you a pint to to calm the nerves i would; god knows the number of pints i've had myself for that very reason.
the philosopher--and let us call him "H"--is a contemporary german philosopher. and contemporary in, like, this bloke is still alive too! unlike his Anglo counterpart, Rawls, who recently passed away. he pontificates on ethics, social and political philosophy. he is generally associated with what's known as 'discourse ethics' which has to do with the way thru dialog people come to (or attempt to come to) agree on principles of conduct (yeah, fat chance!). i could say more......but...i see you are all making your way for the door....
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
21 grams- http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp
It's a film. Like the Da Vinci Code is a novel.
Q- yes you have. As far as anyone can tell as of now, quantum states are only involved in the mind as much as they are with any other matter (which is quite a bit, but you don't notice it).
As for the rest of you, I think it's the word 'machine' that gets the hackles up. You want magic, whether from a god or from new-agey wotsits. You don't WANT the mind to be just something happening in ordinary matter.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by LastToFinish
Re: Soul
It seems that most people have misunderstanding of what the "soul" really is and it's origins in reference to music. Somewhere along the way the definiton of "spirit" and "soul" have been confused in popular culture.
The "soul" is the embodiment of the spirit within the physical shell (i.e. spirit + body = soul).
In music the term was first associated with black slaves in early America. Their music was soulful because it expressed of both strong spiritual convictions and physical hardships.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by dAle
Re: Soul
Is it possible for someone to play with soul if they do not believe in the existence of the spirit...say maybe an atheist?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by ~CK
Re: Soul
CK, my aswer would be yes. for we can affirm that the music has "soul" versus being totally dry and sucking without adverting to metaphysics.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
Rawls? RAWLS? Ye gods and errant knaves, man... have you no shame? I was braced for Nagel, and you give me RAWLS?!
"like the Da Vinci Code is a novel" - -- bwaahahahahaha!
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
DOH! i meant, uh, Rrrrr, rhubarb! please excuse my while flagellate myself mercilessly.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
Brendan, I think this is all coming down to semantics.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by dAle
Re: Soul
I was thinking of issuing a challenge in which all of you state your positions WITHOUT using words of over two syllables. Or maybe three. I'm not without mercy.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Soul
er...and then I suppose it's only fair for me to state my position:
I think you're all trying to nail jello to a tree.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Soul
How does a discussion get this off topic?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by akoz
Re: Soul
Yes, Zina's right - let's get back to basics. Brendan, how do you think we trad musicians should reconcile supposedly epiphenomenic qualia with a shared perception of what we regard as the music. Where *does* the concept of soul fit into all of this? And, while we're at it... what is the correct setting on my washing machine for synthetic colours anyway?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
dAle, that there could be construed as a Reduction and we don't wanna give Pied Piper any more headaches. But you would be in line with a lot of contemporary philosophy especially with one philosopher i'll only indentify as W who would agree with Zina that all this metaphysical talk about "Soul" is just a strange language game (Q: that's a hint) that philosophers play that amounts to not much more than nailing jello to a tree. but sure can be fun can't it! i picture green jello.
Hey, zines, hows the jello with you?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
and, in case anybody is wondering, no I don't know what I just said. But it's important to keep appearances up
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
Because fiddle boy, this is The Session dot org and just like a real session people are here to have a bit of fun, not just to have purely academic discussions.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by ~CK
Re: Soul
Brendan: how many times must Russell tell you - there is NO RHINOCEROS in this room!
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
Q, i'm surprised you don't see it yourself. the answer is of course 42. perfect for keeping whites white and colors brite!
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
Meh - the jello sticks better if you shoot it. . .
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by musicfan
Re: Soul
I can't get behind that
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Just a person
Re: Soul
Hello Brendan, darling! I like orange, myself. Or red. Red is one of my favorite flavors, though.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Soul
well, yeah, Q, it's all fun and games till some gets gored in their very own home.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
I like blue or orange. . .
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by musicfan
Re: Soul
ooooh red. red works for me.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
I don't remember Wittgenstein being any fun at all, frankly
But now that we've conclusively proved to everyone here gathered how clever we all are, I'm going to end with a quote from my dear friend Immanuel (and we all know what a Kant he was).
"Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck."
and I'm certainly not going cross it in my little rowboat... so I'm off down the pub instead.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
very nice, Q. clean finish, no aftertaste. i'll see ya there. i think my rowboat is a pub.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
"No man is an island and no pub is a rowboat..." Discuss.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Soul
I wonder if that inflateable pub could float? Just add oarsmen!
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by ~CK
Re: Soul
Amazing everyone has mised my point; I'll try once more.
What I'm objecting to is the idea that when I play a tune with 100% comitment and my conciousness is in it people listening cannot tell. In other words it's soul in the music is an illusion of the listener.
PP
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Pied Piper
Re: Soul
Perhaps that the point as gone astray might tell you something?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Soul
What an amazing response - 65 so far and it's only Day 1! I haven't time to read them all - some serious practising required this evening - so maybe my view is already there. Soul to me is the draíocht in the music which separates it from just being just a collection of notes or even a "clever" collection with lots of ornamentation, etc. It's not too easy to describe but musicians such as Tommy Peoples, Tony McMahon, Joe Cooley, Matt Molloy, John Carty,etc seem to have it in abundance.
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by Bannerman
Re: Soul
CK, are you talking about the four oarsmen of the Apocalypse?
# Posted on December 8th 2005 by cuchulain54
Re: Soul
PP, I think I see your original point. It seems to me that Shrog isn't allowing for intentional or semi-intentional variations in how a tune is played, but only for howlers. Inconsistency can be a deliberate act, it's not merely due to error or inattention. Now I don't think his example is the best for comparison to ITM; among other things, classical music standards of musicianship place a much higher emphasis on artificial perfection than trad standards do. But frankly, the biggest disjunct that I see in his comparison is this: I've known plenty of orchestra musicians who couldn't care less about the music they're playing in concert, except insofar as they want to play it without any noticeable errors so that the conductor and/or the critics don't whack them upside the head later. It's a job, and like any job some people who do it love it so much they can't see straight and a lot of others are using it to fill their stomachs and keep their roof watertight whilst pursuing their actual passions in off hours. Trad isn't like that for most players; unless you're in a band, and most people in trad bands are not as straitjacketed as most classical musicians, trad IS the actual passion you pursue in your off hours. (Besides, in a trad band you're less likely to have to play piece after piece of ghastliness to keep some nerk of a conductor happy, and thus lose your musical will to live. And no, I don't want to be deluged with stories about keeping some nerk of a bandmate happy; the issues of power and control are not comparable.)
But that's only part of the picture. Another and critical part is the collection of variations and nuances that a player puts into their playing of a tune either deliberately or as a result of their emotional interaction with the tune itself. To me it's *those* differences that amount to what might be termed "soul" in a musical context. (And no, I don't think it has any particular relevance to the theological issues that have been pulled in by their back hair. Trying to insist on an equation based on etymology is like bog-hopping, especially given the variances of meaning in modern English, and I think that particular equation lands any reasonable discussion right in the muck.) Although I'm sure that a trad player could turn out a "soulless", mechanical rendition of a tune, trad standards place a very high value on the process described in another thread under the phrase "making a tune your own". Part of "making a tune your own" is learning how to get far enough inside the tune to play it in different ways according to things like mood, what tunes you've set it with, and other factors. Although happy accidents do occur, often the process instead involves volition.
Having listened to a number of trad musicians play tunes in a recording studio and then seen them perform the same tunes live, I have to say I think Shrog is way off base. I think I see how he got there (after all, I also used to be a classical musician in an orchestra), but he's left out two perfectly huge pieces of the puzzle: the human ability to choose and act on that choice, and the human ability to interact with something nonhuman based on emotional attachment to or emotional response to that nonhuman thing. And those very puzzle pieces are, I think, the key to the whole discussion.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by sara g
Re: Soul
Nice one chuchulain54!
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by ~CK
Re: Soul
There is indeed a puzzle here, and whenever confronted with such a puzzle, I like to go for the top corners first, because they're usually blue and easier to find.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
pied, i think we also run aground on the issue of intention and outcomes, and the lack of necessary connection between them. i can intend (or have a committment to) world peace but that don't necessary produce world peace. i can intend to play the sexiest most coolist super duper soul filled tune ever but that don't necessary translate into beans (unless the tune was composed by me and then its a given; or played by zina after she's done red jello shots). conversely, the fact the a tune or performace has soul doesn't necessarily mean it was intended to be that way. how 'bout we knaw on that narlie metaphysical bone. Going once....going twice...
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
I think whether a player has soul at all is subjective anyway. A musical performance might move some listeners and completely bore others. Can there be a standard quantifiable measurement of soul?
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by ~CK
Re: Soul
I don't play well enough to play with "soul", jello shots or no, red or orange; I play to get through the goddam tune from beginning to end without trainwrecking. I'm not there to communicate my innermost feelings and heartfelt meanings, I'm there to have fun with my friends and those who might become friends. I'm a crap player. Yet plenty of people have heard what soul in my playing they want to hear; it has nothing to do with me. I just play it as best as I can so not to annoy those who play better than me. Fini.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Soul
Hey! Get up offa that thang.. Hey, isn't this the Soul thread man - and ain't no-one mentioned the King of Soul - James Brown yet?
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Ron P
Re: Soul
I think playing with soul mainly means being so familiar and comfortable with a tune that the contours are hand-rubbed and polished like a wooden handrail and it’s almost effortless to glide through it.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Bob himself
Re: Soul
David! My eyes are *watering*...! *smirk*
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Soul
I'm finally with you, Pied.
So you can play your guts out and you think no-one notices. Sometimes. Other times people are a bit too much all ears and every note is more precious to them than to the player.
But yeah, only you know how much soul you put into your rendition of a set.
So, also taking on board someone above's definition of soul vis a vis spirit, getting back to our hijack (:-})....I prefer the more experiential "definition" posited by Hinduism. When you're a baby, you think you are the only thing that has a "soul" or is alive (not interested in an infant's definition of soul) because that's all you know. But then soon after, because you have it, you think everything is alive..teddies, dollies, etc. So you extend your soul to include these inanimate objects, because they have smiles sown onto their faces. As you grow up you learn to distiguish. But essentially the Eastern view is more personal experienced based. Personal experience based religious experience is not not covered by Western Occam's Razor type definitive scientific philosophy, and it all gets discussed in abstracts, which are not human experienced based philosophical realities.
And getting back to Pied's point, only you as an individual player knows how well, or rather how much of your self/soul you put into that last reel you played. but as it is in a medium which other people can understand/communicate with, so those who are seriously listening will be with you.....
....and btw, in case you think they're not really listening, but just being nice to you, I can't remember where right off, but deffo in the Frontal lobes, but there are a group of pyramidal neurons recently discovered that fire off only when their "owner" is "empathising" with another person (or dog, cat, dolphin, etc.) that is undergoing pain/stress/happiness, etc.
Psychopaths don't have them, that's why they can easily shoot another person in the face.
Wandering, but hope it helps.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
"epiphenomenic qualia"
I gotta use that one a conversation some time.
So according to That Would be an Ecumenical Matter's metaphor, if you're somewhat obsessed with acquiring new tunes, does that make you a tune whore?
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Soul
Huh.
Considering I want to get a PhD in philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, I might really use that in a conversation.
Back to your regularly scheduled thread.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Soul
Holy moly, this thread is insane!
Ok, I appologise for this long essay, but this is my last contribution to this topic.
Sara G, you could not have misunderstood me more if you tried. You say "Shrog isn't allowing for intentional or semi-intentional variations in how a tune is played, but only for howlers." Where on earth do you get that from? You then say "Another and critical part is the collection of variations and nuances that a player puts into their playing of a tune either deliberately or as a result of their emotional interaction with the tune itself. To me it's *those* differences that amount to what might be termed "soul" in a musical context." Well, I hate to break it to you but it is exactly *those* differences that *I* am talking about too.
Pied Piper says: "What I'm objecting to is the idea that when I play a tune with 100% commitment and my consciousness is in it people listening cannot tell. In other words it's soul in the music is an illusion of the listener." I understand your objection, but don't mean it as harshly as it sounds. I'm not saying that people cannot tell that you are putting emotion into a tune, but rather that they do not know where that emotion comes from. And they don't need to know where it comes from for them to enjoy your rendition. Also, the listener is now part of the tune, as your performance mixes with his emotions, the result is not entirely under your control.
You have emotion, commitment and consciousness on one side. You have a means to express it: your music. The result is something that may move other people emotionally, spiritually, or whatever. It is impossible for the moved to know what the mover was thinking. Do you only play sad tunes when you are sad, or happy tunes when you are happy? No, you don't. You "conjure up" the emotion required for the performance from your experiences and memories. You are *performing* an emotion, which you may or may not actually be feeling at the time of the performance. (bad sentence) It's like acting. You know what the emotion feels like, and you use that knowledge to perform the tune, but you do not need to actually feel the emotion at the time of the performance. Unless you are a method actor, in which case you will make yourself miserable before performing sad tunes and ecstatic before performing happy tunes. It's all a bit too manic for me. I use the memories of feelings to put feeling into my playing. I'm not saying I do not feel anything while playing, I'm just more in control of those feelings. Can you imagine what would happen if I had to go through the trauma of a loved one's death every time I played the tune I wrote about the tragedy? No, I rather remember the feeling, allow myself to feel it to some extent, and use it to put emotion into the tune. And the "to some extent" refers to how emotional I feel like being about it, so it's not a constant.
So you put as little or as much of yourself as you want to into your performance, and once you've made the sound, it is out there. It is not yours any more. Someone hearing it may think "This guy was very sad when he played this, I bet his whole family was wiped out by a school of hammerhead sharks." But the truth is that you cannot know what the performer's emotional state was or what his past experiences were, you can only speculate. It is this separation between the listener and the player that is the key to this whole argument.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Shrog
Re: Soul
Shrog - these kind of misunderstandings happen all the time on this site. Thanks for clearing it up. I thought it was a thought provoking thread anyway.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
DANNY MACKAY, that's Scheidt (*) about if Heisenberg's right, nithing can be determined on any scale. Pure new- age postmodernist tosh. Quantum effects are invisible at our scale, they even out, even for Zaphod Beeblebrox. We can do a lot of science before we need to throw up our hands and say anything goes.
If consciousness is NOT an emergent property of the activities of the brain, what DO you think it might be? Still looking for the Immortal Soul?
Hows about the guy I know, who lost his Soul after 5 minutes oxygen starvation? "He's" still "living", he can even say good morning if prompted, but his personality has gone. If the soul isn't personality, what determinable effects does it produce? If it is some paraphysical entity, how come it's sensitive to quite physically real chemicals?
(*)1587-1664
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by LastToFinish
Re: Soul
Dear Paul Burke, You're welcome to believe that if you want. Quantum mechanical effects are nearly always invisible at our macro scale, being statistically evened out, but not always. There's always the occasional electron which might do a bit of tunnelling. And those ones might account for a lot. I didn't metaphorically throw up my hands and say anything goes. All I said was don't be absolutely 100% sure of any observation, or set of observations. That's why I'd take big n numbers for an experiment. Any other scientist will tell you the same.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
Oh, and BTW, there are many minds far greater than mine and maybe even yours who ARE looking for the "immortal soul" or whatever, and some may have found it to their satisfaction. You read like you were cynical towards that aspiration.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
Thank you Sara, you that's exactly what I was on about and thank you to every one else. The thread didn't go the way I expected it to but it's been an interesting ride.
Paul please don't mistake me for a wet new age apologist for irrationality, I to believe that the mind is an emergent property of the brain and that there are no minds without brains (physical embodiment), It's just using TM type machines as a model for organic intelligence I find unconvincing.
On Wednesday night I watched David Attenborough’s latest, which dealt with Arthropods and how they use silk. Of cause there was a bit about spider’s webs, with some great footage of spiders caught in the act. We don't usually consider spiders to be particularly intelligent but I think the chances of producing spider like inelegance with an algorithmic digital computer is a million to one; playing chess is easy (specially when you don't have to move the pieces or use eyes to see where they are) building a spiders web in the real world isn't. That’s not to say that non-organic machines can't do it merely that they will have to use similar processes as real spiders, incorporating lots of non-linearity embodied in a hardware analog system strongly coupled to it's environment.
If I'm right then it's somewhat ironic that Computer engineers have spent 60 years trying to persuade analog electronics to behave digitally, only to have to adopt its intrinsic "flaws" for computation.
PP
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Pied Piper
Re: Soul
Good god. You mean, you haven't read any Asimov in all that time? I'm surprised.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Soul
"wet new age apologist for irrationality"
I like it. Truly.
Not sure why things should be so neatly tied up, just to say, what's rational about quantum mechanics? Yes, I know we've decided it doesn't always affect our reality but it is *a* reality.
And there is nothing intrinsically unscientific or irrational in questionning that brains are the only place where resides mind or consciousness. If that were so, let's go the other way...*where* in the brain is the seat of consciousness? Prefrontal cortex? Hippocampus? LGN? Heschl's? .....or it's all functioning as a complex unit? So does that whole unit include peripheral nerves and ganglia? Neurohumoral elements? Where does it end and non-mind begin? Your toenails?
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
The spider is quite possibly an organic machine, "merely" running a highly optimised program- google for "sphex behaviour". All a demostration of the fact that natural selection is cleverer than humans (but doesn't know it).
Where is consciousness? Where is the program in this computer? It would be a devil of a job to find it, if you didn't know how computers work, by examining the instantaneous states of the memory, disk drives, monitor output etc. In one sense you could say it isn't anywhere, it's something that happens in the computer.
Possible answer: consciousness doesn't have a place, it's a process. Processes are real: a flow is a description of a set of states of water, but a tsunami can kill people.
It can be shown that the process happens within the brain: people can have massive damage to many parts of the body without losing their human consciousness, but even a few minutes of rstricted blood flow to the brain destroys that consciousness irrevocably, even when the rest of the body is largely intact.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by LastToFinish
Re: Soul
Ah, now we're onto something. All I'm saying is that "process" restricted to brains? You believe so, I don't. Not as we know it. Thanks for the discussion!
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
The mind connects to the body via the pineal gland, Danny. Ask any drunken f@rt.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Q
Re: Soul
Ah the epiphysis and 5HT production. Thanks for that sharing that wisdom, Matt. BTW talking about computers, if anyone wants a good computer base deal, have a look at what Aldi have on offer for 750 quid: http://uk.aldi.com
no bad, eh?
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~regfjxe/aw.htm
The above article posits the counterintuitive idea that consciousness may be a property of single cells.
PP
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Pied Piper
Re: Soul
Thanks Pied, good article. Only managed to read the introductory and concluding paras, and skimmed through the rest. Even freakier than what I've been saying!
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
oh my god, this thread just keeps on giving....
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Brendan
Re: Soul
Ye-e-e-es? Go on, I'm listening.....
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
All I'm saying is that "process" restricted to brains? You believe so, I don't.
Well, I gave a wee bit of evidence that it depends on the chemistry of the brain, and depends at least very much less on the state of other parts of the body. Have you any evidence to the contrary? Any evidence that it requires either a process in other parts of the body, or in some extracorporeal entity?
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by LastToFinish
Re: Soul
I think Edwards' paper is a muddle. He seems to require that somewhere in the brain there should be "you" watching what's going on, then goes from there to suggest where that "you" could be. That's begging the question.
I'm suggesting that it's both nowhere and everywhere.
# Posted on December 9th 2005 by LastToFinish
Re: Soul
Bliddy Hell. I just did a big response to paul which got swallowed up in the ether. I don't have time now - I'll maybe try again later. Sorry.
# Posted on December 10th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
enter the matrix
# Posted on December 10th 2005 by Sunnybear
Re: Soul
Evidence to the contrary?
drugs can of course reduce or *increase* consciousness levels.
Patients who've undergone massive surgery eg amputations, organ or major tumour removal often present as deeply depressed, for a while. There is no obvious neurological resaon why they should but they do. So other body parts can influence mental state thus degree of consciousness. I can give you more, much more on this but it's probably tedious for everyone else. Email me for references if really interested.
Extracorporeal entity? Maybe more like intracorporeal .... ultimately self examining the nature of the gift of self reflective consciousness. Would I dare to sneer at a devout Muslim, or a committed Christian in prayer? A holy Saddhu in meditation or a Siberian shaman in trance, and ask them to present me with evidence of extracorporeal influence on their behaviour? not an evidence based belief system, but one based on personal experience. I can't say any more in that regard, other than try not to dismiss things which you have clearly not been engaged in.
# Posted on December 10th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Soul
Shrog, I was reading your original statement (both as Pied gave it and in the original thread, in case of misquote) exactly as written. Particularly the sentence:
"What you call "soul" is simply the collected affects of glitches, errors, human inconsistancy and distraction."
I simply didn't see anything in that statement that allowed for intentional variation. If you did, then fair enough, I misunderstood you; but I think with reason.
You're welcome, PP.
Much as I'd like to comment on the debate between Danny and Paul, I think I'd best leave that one go.
# Posted on December 10th 2005 by sara g
Re: Soul
I miss Aretha, been so long now...
# Posted on December 10th 2005 by Owell Mabee
Re: Soul
Music...Soul...Korea move?
Bx
# Posted on December 10th 2005 by briantheflute
Re: Soul
I'm everywhere and nowhere Baby
That's where I am.
# Posted on December 10th 2005 by Pied Piper
Re: Soul
Ha Ha Pied...erm, I think he said, nowhere and everywhere, actually....
# Posted on December 11th 2005 by Rudall the time