Commentaries of Little Consequence

The only Tab

2011-10-17T18:06:00.000-07:00

-----------------------------------------------------

Ballad of Serenity (Firefly Theme Song)

written by Joss Whedon

as performed by Sonny Rhodes

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Tabbed by: S&G

Tuning: Open C:  CGCGCE   (low to high)

         C       C(no 3^rd)      B_b69      F/A

e|------ 0 ------- 3 ----------- 1 ------- 1 -------|

C|------ 0 ------- 0 ----------- 0 ------- 0 -------|

G|------ 0 ------- 0 ----------- 0 ---- 0 (or 2) ---|

C|------ 0 ------- 0 ----------- 0 ------- 0 -------|

G|------ 0 ------- 0 ----------- 3 ------- 2 -------|

C|------ 0 ------- 0 ----------- x ------- x -------|

       Gmin        D^#A^#       F
e|------ x ------- 3 ---------- (3) ------ 5 -------|
C|------ 2 ------- 3 ----------- 5 ------- 5 -------|
G|------ 3 ------- 3 ----------- 3 ------- 5 -------|
C|------ 2 ------- 3 ----------- 5 ------- 5 -------|
G|------ 0 ------- 3 ----------- 3 ------- 5 -------|
C|------ x ------- 3------------ x ------- 5 -------|

Notes on the chords:

     Emphasize the base note of every chord (the base

of C doesn’t have to be the low C). Where x’s appear,

do not play that string. But you don’t need all the

other notes; if you’re picking, just pick out the

important ones. For the A^# you can pick the high e

string as a passing note, but it isn’t in the chord,

so don’t linger or strum that string. C (no 3^rd) is

always played before B_b69 as a sort of walk down

thing on the high e. The F/A chord does not really

have a G in it ( open 3^rd string), but it sounds nice.

INTRO:

e|-------------------------------------------------|

C|-------------------------------------------------|

G|-------------------------------------------------|

C|------------0------3p0---------------------------|

G|-----0h3-----------------------------------------|

C|-------------------------------3(bend)--p0-------|

Verse Pattern:

C(no 3^rd)     B_b69

Take my love, take my land,

F/A             C       Gmin

take me where I cannot stand,

D^#            A^#

I don’t care, I’m still free,

F                 C      Gmin

you can’t take the sky from me.

C(no 3^rd)    B_b69

Take me out to the black,

F/A               C     Gmin

tell ‘em I ain’t comin’ back.

D^#                A^#

Burn the land and boil the sea,

F                  C      Gmin

you can’t take the sky from me.

Bridge (Violin Solo)

D^#          A^#F

End:

C(no 3^rd)       B_b69

There’s no place I can be

F/A              C   Gmin

since I’ve found Serenity

D^#          F           F C

You can’t take the sky from me

=====================================================

Not a Journal

2011-02-21T19:37:00.001-08:00

Once again I have left for too long. A blog is somehow not a page, and putting words to it is much easier. As this offers such good practice, I should make use of it much more often.

It is fitting, as I have only minutes to lend, to consider here what has long held my wonder. I have seen old journals, real and fictional, with such brief and vapid enteries.

"Monday, February 21 - Worked today. Colder weather has returned. Reading Balzac."

I don't know exactly what they are for or what they are worth. I'm not really trying one here, not sincerely. And it may be the value only comes with the unfailing consistency with which one enters these notes, marking the passage of time...

Barnes, faith

2011-01-03T21:41:00.001-08:00

I’m reading Julian Barnes’ Nothing to be Frightened Of . It’s a wonderful book about death, the fear of death, etc. It is everywhere referred to as a memoir, which is not at all wrong, but these days it is perhaps more illustrative to call it a novel-length blog post. Although the latter does require the qualification that only a style is indicated; the book is by no means of amateurish quality. I find it sufficiently entertaining but admire it mostly for being persistently intellectual without ever being or seeming pretentious.

Barnes spends a great deal of time on ‘God’ and christianity, understandably for his background and his subject. The book is interesting enough that it always gets me thinking, and light enough to let me go off on my own (a particularly enjoyable balance, entirely to the author’s credit). So I find that I have been thinking very much about ‘God.’ I have decided that the essence of my relationship to the subject can be described quite succinctly.

In my youth I was introduced to a number of faiths and encouraged to explore, doubt, and inquire. Although I have always been somewhat contrary by nature, I did endeavor sincerely on many occasions to engage as fully as possible with a particular faith. I had caught on that religion was a significant part of many people's lives, and I was willing to try and step into some such world and see if I could be equally at home in it, if it could offer me the same comfort. As to which religions I cautiously embraced, my choices were largely aesthetic, and sometimes shyly rational.

What I came away with from these adventures was the realization that some people actually believe in God. It should emphasize how foreign this idea was to me that it came as a realization (but not in a flash; for me there was no Epiphany). The mystery of religion became at once clear and utterly opaque as I realized that for some these creeds were not metaphorical. They were not, as I had always assumed them to be, somewhat Eastern or poetic. They were straightforward moral tenets, metaphysical posits, and historical certainties. Since then there has been an unbridgeable gulf between me and the issue of faith. I simply cannot conceive, I cannot grip, the idea of holding such beliefs. I cannot imagine myself doing so. What would it be like to honestly believe one’s head was a pumpkin? I can pose the question, but beyond that I am lost. Had I not heard of madness, I would think it not just physically or biologically but logically, analytically impossible. I try to remain respectful towards people of faith, but I do think I am indulging insanity for my social convenience when I do so.

I've been bad.

2010-12-30T08:17:00.000-08:00

I promised myself that I would keep posting here, even though - as you imaginary readers may have surmised - I have not followed through on my plans to produce a writing sample.

This is the insufferable paradox from which I must escape: I itch and chafe under the pedagogical yoke. I resent all authority over me as an insult to my intelligence and competence. I become defensive and ashamed at the most gentle correction. At the less gentle, indignant (even if silently so). But I wither and waste without structure and guidance.

All psycho-analytic joking aside, it's my mother's fault - or would be, anyway, were I not already-for-a-long-time past the age where all responsibility for my character was transferred squarely onto my own shoulders. She often had a command-now, explain never attitude. In turn, I often questioned her authority and her methods. I demanded explanation and reasons, and usually incentive, before even thinking of doing what she asked. I think this was rather trying for her and she fell back to that familiar parental response, 'because I said so.' I'm told that as soon as I was old enough to walk and talk, my older sister delighted herself in telling me what to do. The earliest part of that is lost to me, but I know bit and scratched her as much as I could. And I spent the rest of my childhood - and much of my adolescence - constantly refusing, avoiding, & procrastinating. I also got into the habit of claiming that I knew best, even in the most ridiculous situations. I think I may have once objected to my father's instructions, when he allowed me to steer a forklift, with an emphatic "I know what I'm doing." This from a seven year old who had never even driven a power-wheels.

The causal storyline here is rightfully obscured. Perhaps my mother was very reasonable until one day my sister's 'mother to be' act drove me to become an obstinate brat, which my mom didn't take very well. Perhaps my mother was always as frustratingly opaque with my sister as she was later with us both. And so my sister was merely commanding me as she had been in turn. Two things are true in any case. My mother was responsible, and I felt very impotent.

I feel impotent now too, but not because other people tell me what to do. Now if I want to do something, I find it very difficult. Doing things hasn't really become my forte.

A philosopher's proof that 'p'

2010-05-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

Get a puppy. You'll find the question "p v ~p?" is easily answered with a sniff. It's p.

I'm not making that up...

2010-03-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

I have committed no small offense in attributing a position to Jerry Fodor without citation. To rectify the situation, I present the following from "Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought."

First, [Aunty] concedes that there are beliefs and desires and that there is a matter of fact about their intentional contents; there's a matter of fact, that is to say, about which proposition the intentional object of a belief or a desire is. Second, Aunty accepts the coherence of physicalism. It may be that believing and desiring will prove to be states of the brain, and if they do that's OK with Aunty. Third, she is prepared to concede that beliefs and desires have causal roles and that overt behavior is typically the effect of complex interactions among these mental causes, [...] In short, Aunty recognizes that psychological explanations need to postulate a network of causally related intentional states. (Fodor, JA (1987): "Why There Still Has to Be A Language of Thought," in Psychosemantics: The Problem of

Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press - the

first paragraph)

Fodor begins with these premises that his Hylas

(endearingly, "Auntie") already accepts. Then he sets off

on the real matter at hand, '"But why," she asks with perceptible asperity, "does it have to be a language?" Or, to put it more succinctly than Aunty often does, what - over and above mere Intentional Realism - does the Language of Thought Hypothesis buy? That is what this discussion is about.' (ibid, the very next sentences.) But the virtue of this starting point is exactly what I mean to call into question. What, over and above mere intentional realism, does this form of intentional naturalism buy?

Some beginning distinctions.

2010-02-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

The next stop in this train of thought is an excerpt from Russell's chapter on the Atomists in History of Western Philosophy. I have perhaps reproduced a larger excerpt than is necessary to inform our current project, but the paragraph deserves to be read in its entirety - I am sure you will agree.

The atomists, unlike Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause. The 'final cause' of an occurrence is an event in the future for the sake of which the occurrence takes place. In human affairs, this conception is applicable. Why does the baker make bread? Because people will be hungry. Why are railways built? Because people will wish to travel. In such cases, things are explained by the purpose they serve. When we ask 'why?' concerning an event, we may mean either of two things. We may mean: 'What purpose did this event serve?' or we may mean: 'What earlier circumstances caused this event?' The answer to the former question is a teleological explanation, or an explanation by final causes; the answer to the latter question is a mechanistic explanation. I do not see how it could have been known in advance which of these two questions science ought to ask, or whether it ought to ask both. But experience has shown that the mechanistic question leads to scientific knowledge, while the teleological question does not. The atomists asked the mechanistic question, and gave a mechanistic answer. Their successors, until the Renaissance, were more interested in the teleological question, and thus led science up a blind alley.

(Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy (1946). Routledge Classics, 2004. Pages 73-74.)

There's a lot here. Note, Russell does not acknowledge the role that 'final causes' or 'purposes' often play in justification, and considers exclusively the role of either causes (what he calls 'mechanistic' causes) or purposes in explanation. For the time being, I will follow Russell's lead. The core thought is that there is (at least) one clear dichotomy of statements that answer why-questions. All such answers put forth an explanans in virtue of which the explanandum occurs (or is the case, or will occur, etc.) In one case the explanandum occurs as a result of the explanans. In the other, the explanandum occurs so that the explanans will result.

This distinction seems sound, and especially important in the context of Russell's historical discussion of philosophy and empirical science. But we're less likely to benefit from making this distinction than from being reminded that there exists a context in which it is helpful. We don't live in an intellectual climate wont to ever call anything a 'cause' but what Russell calls a 'mechanistic cause.' So it is good to be reminded that this type of cause is not entirely dissimilar from other reasons. They share the primary function of answering why-questions.

I can think of only one criticism of Russell's essential point. In splitting up answers to why-questions thus, he provides no place for answers which are neither mechanistic nor teleological. The reasons that fall through the cracks, so far as I can see, are those answers which refer to no purpose, but are nevertheless intentional. For example, 'Why did Bob take a cookie from the jar?' - 'Because Bob believed that there were cookies in the jar; he wanted a cookie, and no reason to abstain impressed him.' This is certainly not a straightforward mechanistic explanation. Neither, I think, is it merely teleological, i.e., just another way of saying, 'in order to satisfy his sweet tooth.' However, I think the idea that such explanations, properly analyzed, are ultimately teleological is much more plausible than the idea that, given enough physiological or neurological research, they will turn out to be mechanistic. The latter view is held by many contemporary philosophers, notable Fodor.

Thoughts to come...

2010-02-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

My first attempt at producing a writing sample for grad. school will take up the relation between a 'reason' and a 'cause.' There's a lot of food for this thought, but let's take what what I want to treat as a paradigmatic example of (perhaps rightfully, and within a limited scope) equating the two.

"The epistemic basing relation is the relation which holds between a reason and a belief if and only if the reason is a reason for which the belief is held.[...] Causal theories of the basing relation hold that for a belief to be based on a reason, the reason must cause the belief in an appropriate way" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The Epistemic Basing Relation," http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/basing-epistemic/, accessed 2/19/10)

The issue at hand is when one might rightfully say something like "She believes A because A*." These statements assert that one fact is a reason for another (the latter a doxastic one). The idea of a causal theory here is that such an assertion is justified only if a causal relation (of some kind) obtains between the two facts. To be this kind of reason is to be a kind of cause.

I want to inquire whether, in making these sorts of (increasingly ubiquitous) equations, we run over a boundary of sorts (logical?, grammatical? psychological?). The answer might be a definitive 'No.' But it shouldn't be a dismissive 'Of course not.'

As I start work on this, much of my brainstorming will probably appear here.