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TROLLEYS, VIOLINS AND WHAT THEY CAN TELL YOU ABOUT YOURSELF

53 Comments - Add comment Written on 08-Feb-2009 by patencia

Where scientists have microscopes and rats, philosopher's have people and their minds. What they all do are experiments and, although the former are more costly, the latter are also useful. Philosopher's use "thought experiments" with hypothetical scenarios to test people's intuitions and to draw consequences for real-world issues.

Here are some well known examples:

The Famous Violinist (Test for intuitions on the case of the acceptability of abortion)

"You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with a famous unconscious violinist.The Society of Music Lovers kidnapped you, and got the violinist's circulatory system plugged into yours, so he can survive. The director of the hospital now tells you, Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But to unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation?"

In other words, Are you (morally) obliged to stay connected? Judith J. Thomson, the author, thinks you are not. It would be generous if you did, she claims, but there is no obligation to stay, even if that means the violinist will die. She takes this to be a pro-life argument. But of course, this is by no means uncontroversial.

The Trolley Problem and the Fat Man and the Trolley Car

"A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?"

The example becomes more interesting in light of this variant

"As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"

Generally, people approve of flipping the switch in the first case, while they do not find it acceptable to drop the fat guy of the second scenario, even if both cases involve deciding to sacrifice one person to save the remaining five. The philosophical question is: why?

Philosophical experiments don't lead to the discovery of vaccines or antibiotics; they certaily don't safe lives. However, they help us to learn something about us as "moral" individuals, and well, they give you something to talk about during dinner (when you can remember them).

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Tags: philosophy,experiments,intuitions

THE REMAINS OF THOSE DAYS

4 Comments - Add comment Written on 05-Feb-2009 by patencia

Obama&Bush

Bush's days are over, but they left us revealing images behind. Errol Morris has compiled some of them accompanied by their respective author's opinions. My favorite is the one shown above; the shadows couldn't be more Democrat... This time, the dark side is not the black side.

BTW. If you didn't know Morris' blog at the NYT, go and have a look. But most importantly, if you haven't seen his documentary films, watch them. Especially, The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line and the bizarre Gates of Heaven.

UPDATE:

Pop culture's artifacts as reminders of those days (1) Ben & Jerry's ice-cream tribute to Obama "YES PE-CAN" and (2) The monument to the catapulting shoe.

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Tags: morris,photography,bush,obama

THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

0 Comments - Add comment Written on 31-Jan-2009 by patencia

A 7min (the remaining 1.10min are credits), nicely illustrated Short History of the Internet. And a good example of a documentary short-film without photographic images.

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Tags: internet,youtube,documentary

HAPPY RABBIT HOLE DAY

3 Comments - Add comment Written on 27-Jan-2009 by patencia

`What sort of people live about here?'

`In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'

HAPPY 177th BIRTHDAY Mr. CARROLL

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Tags: mad,alice,rabbit hole day,lewis carroll

IF LOOKS COULD KILL

4 Comments - Add comment Written on 24-Jan-2009 by patencia

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Tags: looks,images,ccctv

THE BOX AND THE BRILLO BOX

0 Comments - Add comment Written on 23-Jan-2009 by patencia

Spielberg, Warhol and Bianca Jagger in an interview. The director confesses he once swallowed a transistor.

April 1964, Manhattan's Stable Gallery. Warhol presents for the first time his Brillo Boxes. Some months later, a Canadian art dealer tries to import 80 of the boxes (each of them valued U$250). He has trouble in the customs. There seems to be an irregularity: what has been transported, says the customs agent, is no art work, is just ‘merchandise’, which means he should charge 20% of the value as duty. They call the director of the National Gallery of Canada as an authority that could mediate in the dispute. The director examines photographs of the boxes and declares: these are no sculptures, as far as I can see.

This marked the beginning of a new era of art, according to Arthur C. Danto, the teller of this story. Works like the Brillo Boxes, culminated a process preceded by Duchamp’s ready-mades, Jasper Jones appropriation of the American flag, or Lichtenstein's of Mickey Mouse, which “raised the deep philosophical issue of what the difference was between art and reality when there was no perceptual difference.”

Until this past Sunday, two of the Brillo Boxes were here in London at the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition Other Voices, Other Rooms. But they were not the only attraction. There were also 16 drawings, sewn photographs, the Time Capsule, factory diaries, and many other surprises such as the silver clouds installation. But if there was anything predominant in the exhibition it was the audiovisual works.

Among them, I was particularly fascinated by the silent film portraits. Yet, what I found most interesting were the 42 TV Episodes that Warhol made for cable TV stations in NY and for MTV. Warhol is known as one of the big figures of pop art, a movement that paradigmatically celebrated, vindicated and exploited the mass media and its culture. Now, TV is the queen of the mass media, but whereas these days is frequent to see advertising posters and comics in museums, it’s very difficult to find a TV screen/programme in any exhibition. It seems as if the art people would happily have accepted that some unusual objects could be art but TV is too much to bear.

That is why I found Other Voices, Other Rooms, specially illuminating. I’ve seen various Warhol exhibitions and many Warhol’s works before, but this is the first time I’ve seen his TV programs—it’s actually the first time the 42 episodes are shown together. And they are interesting because they look as any other question-and-answer/interview programme of the 70s, they have the same cheesy look, the same DIY-programme-style signature tune. But that's precisely the idea: as with the Brillo Boxes there is nothing you can see that makes the difference. The question is whether with TV it works as well as with any other ordinary object.

Nowadays, the work of Andy Warhol has become so hackneyed (specially the Marilyn-Elvis, etc. silkscreen printings), that we barely come to appreciate his contribution to art history. Fortunately, exhibitions like Other Voices, Other Rooms remind us that Warhol’s work goes beyond his pictures of Campbell’s Soup cans or his overused multicolor printings; and that the box as well as the Brillo box can also be (pop) art.

LONDON. SEASON 2 . EPISODE 1.

4 Comments - Add comment Written on 20-Jan-2009 by patencia

9.40 am Gatwick. I’m back in London – 11.20 the lift doesn’t work – 5 floors carrying my 20kilos suitcase – open the door (how small) – everything is clean – where are they? - I’m happy to be here – Am I really? – Yes, I guess. But I miss them – Off to Warhol exhibition.

Ok. Play it.

this post was delayed 2 days

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Tags: london,mgmt

I'M ALL EARS

4 Comments - Add comment Written on 16-Jan-2009 by patencia

Back in my tender pre-adolescence, as soon as my older brothers moved to college taking with them what up to then I thought was our music, I realized I needed some musical independence. I then began buying my own CDs and, as a consequence of this, I went through some very pathetic experiences.

In the quest of trying to recover those songs I loved but-never-knew-whose-songs-they-were (many of them were in my brothers' MIX cassettes), I used to go to the record store and eagerly hummed the melody to the guy in charge. Very frequently, the pretentious twenty-something-super-old guy ended up thinking I was a ridiculous mocosa and I (an even more pretentious preperson) thought he was an ignorant of European new musical trends*. But more importantly, the experience was almost always unsuccessful: in many cases, I had to wait for chance to give me an opportunity to hear the song again and if I was too lucky, someone around could tell me what song it was, so I could go and buy it. Those were clearly not lastfm/spotify years.

Fortunately, new generations will not have to go through this (or this) anymore. Now we have programs like Shazam and Midomi that recognize music tracks just by having someone (or something--a music player) humming or singing them. Moreover, once they identify the track, they display the pertinent info (author, album, etc.) and other links to videos and iTunes.

I've heard about these programs and their virtues before. But I've never tried them until yesterday thanks to Pepe and his iPhone, and I must say it's the closest thing to magic I've seen lately.

"The concept behind Shazam is simple: whenever you hear a song playing and can't identify it--on the car radio, at a friend's house, at a bar--you activate the Shazam application on your mobile phone [or iPhone]. It "listens" to the song for about 30 seconds, then sends a text message to your phone [or shows the info directly if it's an iPhone] identifying the artist and title. Shazam's database contains audio fingerprints for nearly 5 million songs, so there's a pretty good chance of a positive ID.

Midomi, in turn,

"[i]s a classic Web 2.0 service with user generated and social networking for singers and music fans. Their searchable database of music (which their music recognition search engine uses for matching voice search queries) is 100% user-generated - it's been built up entirely by their registered members recording and submitting the music of their choice."

And one important thing: both Shazam and Midomi are FREE.

*I was living in Caracas back then.

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Tags: music,software,shazam,midomi

THE ABUSE OF BEAUTY

5 Comments - Add comment Written on 13-Jan-2009 by patencia

For a film buff and pie lover as I am, Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights couldn't look more appealing. Yet, as it turned out, it was all about looks and appearances; the film is like an irresistible looking pie but tasteless once you bite it.

As in 2046 and In the Mood for Love, the visual composition of almost every shot is exquisite. Yet, unlike in those previous films, in My Blueberry Nights one has the feeling of all that visual beauty being somehow gratuitous, whimsical and shallow. Every element of the film seems to be there just for the sake of making it pretty. The film is supposedly a road movie, but it is really just a postcard of it; a slideshow of a refined tourist's trip; a vain, if beautiful, visual shortcut. The sudden appearance of Chan Marshall (Cat Power) as the russian ex-lover of the main character, seems as pure unjustified fetishism, even for those like me, who like her almost as much as her music. Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Norah Jones and Rachel Weisz, in turn, strive to give some body to their characters and detach them from the gravity of the alluring scenery. But the truth seems to be that they are there because they are beautiful.

Of course, beauty has never been a problem for artistic works as being sweet is not a problem for pies. Yet, eating a spoon of sugar alone is not so tasty.

Arthur Danto held that beauty is not a necessary condition for art: as the 20th century avant-garde showed us, there are ordinary even ugly art works. Now, what Wong's film makes me question is whether beauty is a sufficient condition. Perhaps sometimes it is: in purely decorative works, for instance. So, perhaps, looking at My Blueberry Nights in the way one looks a wallpaper would be more recommendable; because if one does it, no doubt one's going to get a rewarding experience.

The problem is that I was promised a blueberry pie, and I only got a spoon full of sugar.

[Rqgb has a more positive opinion on the film]

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Tags: films,beauty,wong kar wai