World of wonders

A moment of quiet between the mountains of Things To Do – you remember me complaining about this in my last and ultra brief post. I am more or less on schedule, and I am hoping to complete this half of the academic year by the third week of June, and then go off for a little holiday. Not too long, coz we get homesick (tell no one, it is a secret).

Some things have being changing, taking shape. To my surprise, I have started to take part in university life. Not too much. I am a live-at-home student, cannot stay at the university beyond the lectures, because I also have a full-time job. But I find myself drawn into discussing issues with other students outside of the seminars. I have even asked to join the ReMa WhatsApp group. Mind you, this happened mostly at the initiative of the other students – they come up and talk to me, ask questions, show interest; offer suggestions; today one of them suggested doing a mutual review of our papers. It is .. yes, nice. Really nice.

I have also become a little more courageous. I worked hard to understand what the seminars in Philosophy of Mind and in Philosophy of Language were about, exactly, and it has payed off. Gone are the awkward silences when I ask ‘my’ professor a question, because now we share some common ground, and I understand the issues much better. The second lecturer in the Philosophy of Mind seminar has picked up on my way of thinking. Often when I ask a question or offer a suggestion, he expands on it. Emboldened by these little successes I have dared to send the occasional mail, to get a question answered or suggest something, or even share some academic tid-bit – and received encouraging replies. It is so very different from communication at the office, such a relief.

So, time for a leap of faith. Recently, I have also written to other professors, at other universities. In one case, because I wanted to get my hands on a book that was very expensive and not in our university library (notice the “our”?). Would you believe it, after the official refusal, I received a electronic copy “for my personal use only” I proudly passed it on to ‘my’ professor (I am assuming he is included in the personal use stipulation) who was just a tiny bit impressed I think, and more importantly, liked the book very much.  And there is more of this new brave academic me. A colleague has recently done a PhD in a related topic (rule based language interpretation). I was interested to see if it touched on my interests. Her text contained a claim about the formal language system she uses being grounded in speech act theory which I knew to be wrong. So I asked the professor who has created this formal language system about it, as I assumed my colleague got that particular text from his department. I received a very nice email, stating that I was right, he will have that text amended (not in the dissertation, but online), and he also sent me lots of other relevant information about a book he is publishing in the fall.

Wow. Once I retire, in only 10 years :–) I can do this all the time. Get in touch with these incredibly knowledgeable people, ask questions, exchange ideas. The only thing I have to do, is become sufficiently knowledgeable about what the issues are and why. Today, ‘my’ professor said that he would happily pay 10 euro for a video of a great ape instructing another ape. You might not immediately see the significance of this (I did not a mere two months ago). The idea or actually the problem is that great apes can learn but they do not instruct, nor to they correct other apes. Which implies that normative behaviour, such as language (depending on which school of thought you are in), is exclusively human. Anyway, the professor said something about St Andrews, so tonight I tracked down the researcher who goes by the name Naked Primate on Twitter, and asked her. Super quick reply. Alas, I will not be earning 10 euro!

You might wonder how my husband it taking all this mental expansion. Well, it turns out he has been trying to talk to me about quite a lot of things. Remember, he is into these big books? These books are often on philosophical issues, but somehow I have not felt comfortable talking about philosophy until I went back to uni. Strange, eh? Particularly because a lot of these topics, about analytical philosophy, for instance, are exactly what I am dealing with now. Anyway, I am now trying to convince him to read some books for me, but I have a feeling he will stay firmly on his own track.

What is next? Well, two things. Next week, there is a day long seminar at which all of my professors are speaking plus some important ones from abroad. Originally that date was reserved for team-building at the office, but was cancelled only days ago. So I can attend! This is the universe helping me, I think. This seminar is connected to what I intend to write my philosophy of mind paper on, 6000 words on the “enactive mind”. Remember the Lego in a previous post? That’s the one. The picture at the top of this post explains this theory well, better than I can at this moment. Have a look at the video on Vimeo, the first part. It shows how life develops, one step at the time. Mind you, it is an artistic translation selected for this purpose by a enactive mind researcher (in reality this video belongs to a Kung-fu-motion art project).

The other event is that as part of my ReMa Skills class I have to do a presentation aimed at an educated public (i.e. not philosophers or high-level academics). Wish me luck. It is will be on “Cyberspace and philosophy of language”. Not a usual combination! I have constructed the narrative around the tale of the Emperor’s new clothes. I am hoping my colleagues at the office will allow me to try it out on them. Husband has already agreed to help too. I will tell you how it went in another post.