• Martinez aka Mars
    Amuses

    Something old and something new

    The past two months I spent writing and waiting. Writing papers, and waiting for my grades. I just did not want to post anything before knowing if my labouring led to anything at all. As you might remember from previous posts, hard work does not necessarily get me a good grade, particularly not with my own professor who is very critical. But this time, the work paid off. Two ‘9’ s – I was over the moon. These are not just for the papers, but the overall grade for the course- of which the papers are a major part.

    “Evolution of language” paper

    My paper on “naive normativity” is publishable, my professor said, if shortened. It would have to be, it was over 12.000 words (supposed to be 5.000 so it got a little out of hand). Apparently I might hand it in as a Master’s thesis, because it fits the requirements. Then, if I switched to the regular MA course, I would already be finished. But I won’t do that. I am enjoying myself, and I feel there is still so much more to learn before I can start on my PhD with any kind of confidence.

    I won’t post the whole paper here, because the professor wants to talk to me about it, and I am not sure what his plans are. So I will just post the abstract below, that will give you an idea what is is about. All about chimps, of course. Did I mention I was deliriously happy when I received the feedback for this paper? I am beginning to think this adventure – the old bag back to uni – may go well. I intend to go on writing papers until I am at least hundred years old. Anyway, first things first.

    Monkey reaching for the moon, Japanese Zen painting

    Abstract of “Naive Normativity”

    Kristin Andrews’ theory of naïve normativity invites us to take a fresh look at normative behaviour. She proposes a minimal definition of social norms and underlying cognitive abilities, which does not rely on mind-reading and may be applied to humans and animals alike. The first part of this paper explains her theory. The second part addresses the question on how to assess supporting evidence. In the third part, evidence that Andrews puts forward in support of specific candidate animal social norms, is reviewed. Inconsistent or irrelevant evidence is laid aside; the remainder is reviewed based on the criteria established in part two. Some candidate animal social norms pass. Most do not. The paper concludes with recommendations for further research.

    Methods and Skills – position paper

    I told you about my struggles with this before. I wrote a paper on metaphors early in autumn which I had hoped would be the final version. I had put so much work into it! But it turned out that the professor disagreed with me on the contents. Privately I feel that the problem was not with the contents but that I had taken on too much, combined with my professor not being quite-up-to-date on the topic. It did not help that he is so incredibly knowledgeable about everything else;he must be used to being right all the time. What we call, in my other life, an expert judgement – always extreme. This expert judgement also got me very high grades on other papers in the course, so I must not grumble. Anyway, I turned the metaphor paper into a play and made it humourous – and it worked, after submitting a second draft.. You can read it here. It is quite safe, not so heavy. You may enjoy it.

    If you read it, you will come across Anna Majofski. She is inspired on the great-grandmother of my great-grandmother, who was a daughter of Theo Majofski who was an important Dutch actor some centuries ago. None of the acting or musical talent found its way into my genes! Still, it is an interesting heritage. My great-grandmother was chucked out of her chique family on account of her becoming pregnant by the local carpenter . My grandmother did not care to talk about this – pregnancy before marriage, worse, sex outside your class, was considered a big shame at the time – so most details remained hidden until records became available on the internet for me to find. Anyway, I needed a character for my little play, so I picked her. Not a lot is known about her, so I felt free to credit her with all sorts of opinions. I hope it would have amused here. The play certainly amused my professor, and during two drafts I saw him coming around to my way of thinking. A little trick I learned at the office: if there is an argument with too many voices, stop arguing and give space to the voices. Through an animation, a film, a dialogue, or as in this case, a play.

    New horizons

    This semester I have four seminars. A big one on folk psychology, which is part of Philosophy of Mind. I already know the lecturers from last year. They are great. And three slightly smaller ones, on Ethics for Artificial Intelligence, Computational Psycholinguistics, and Kant, Logic and Cognition. That last seminar is in Amsterdam, starts at the end of March; the other three are in Nijmegen, and started last week. Seminars from 10:30 until 17:15 without a break (well, we get small breaks during the lectures) – it is quite tiring. I wasn’t particularly rested, so when I finally rolled into the Cultuur cafe to have a pizza with Husband, I was exhausted. Also, I had stupidly worn new shoes and not thought about having to walk some distance between buildings. So my heels are rubbed raw. Fortunately I still had a full package of blister-plasters – at home. Been wearing them ever since. Hopefully my feet will heal up soon.

    I also need to start writing my “state of the art” paper, which is the official preparation for my Master thesis. I think I might have to postpone it until the summer holidays, coz it is going very slowly. Never mind. There is no rush. I might complete the whole course in two years (as if I were a full time student), or perhaps take another half year. It does not matter. This first year has gone well. I am amazed at how much difference the course, and my return to university has made to me, and to my life. Whatever next 🙂

    I will keep you posted on the new seminars and what I learn. It is my last 6 months doing seminars before I have to start my thesis. Exciting!

  • Amuses

    Metaphors

    The evolution-of-language project is coming together now that I have moved to the new group, as I told you in my previous post. We are still struggling a bit because we have to try to understand chimpanzee behaviour without the aid of proper definitions for concepts like “norm”, “intentional behaviour”, “coordination”, and “communication”. This is intentional on the professor’s part: because most definitions from literature are either wrong or not useful, his idea is that we have to work things out for ourselves by starting from scratch.

    I attended a couple of Skype meetings with my new group, and we have waded through nearly 100 examples of possible normative animal behaviour. I had fun setting up a data sheet and translating our decisions into a ruleset. The ruleset helps in detecting inconsistent judgements, very useful when you have to look at this many examples. If you want to get an idea of the things we are looking at, check out this link. It is a kind of dictionary of ape gestures, including video fragments and an explanation of what each gesture might mean.

    Did we arrive at any conclusions as yet? Well, the clearest examples of normative behaviour seem to occur when there is danger, death, sex or food (shortage) to be dealt with. So we are going to dive into those and see what components these behaviours consist of that might be a precursor to communication. I will report back on this when there is more to say. Although I think the project might not be entirely successful, because its organisation flaunt virtually all the rules of proper project management. Which in itself is not so bad – project management is not a religion – but I think the project has too many variables – in terms of goals, structure and method. Still, things may be different in Philosophia as compared to Real Life. I will wait and see. At the very least I get to keep the extensive library that the professor has shared with us. I have put all the books and articles into my citation system. Have a look if you like, it is all here. The index that is, I cannot share the books and articles themselves. Eh … and I have not read all of that. Some. More later.

    Meanwhile, there is my other seminar. I already told you a bit about the seminar and its professor in this previous post. It is the Skills & Method class which runs for an entire year, and I am greatly enjoying this semester. Already I have written three short papers which got an “excellent” or some such- but I am holding my breath, because I will have to wait until next week to find out the actual grades.

    The “big” paper for this class is a so-called “position paper”. The idea is that you take a methodological issue, describe it and then position your own ideas in relation to it. It is not meant to be terribly long – only 3000 words, which is about 6 pages excluding footnotes and biography. I have decided mine is going to be on “metaphors” as a philosophical instrument. I tried to confer with my supervising professor, but he is not much into methodology at this moment. He did warn me that one might spend a lifetime on metaphors. Right. So I have found out. I have been reading several books and articles on metaphors. Last week I was off work and bliss! could study 14 hours a day without interruption, only surfacing for domestic chores, the obligatory walks and the occasional shared leisure with Husband (we are watching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid plus we went in search of mushrooms in the big woods surrounding Apeldoorn). I wish every week was like this, for the rest of my life. Only 3654 days until retirement 🙂

    Let me tell you a bit about metaphors:

    • Metaphors are omnipresent. The average person utters one metaphor for every ten to twenty-five words, about six metaphors a minute.
    • Metaphors are powerful. They can explain and amuse but also persuade and deceive. For that reason, they are often used in politics and advertising. Did you know the GDPR (the data protection act) contains metaphors depicting Europe as a land of milk-and-honey where democracy and freedom and wellbeing reigns, surrounded by hostility that we need to protect ourselves against?
    • Metaphors are mysterious. There is no consensus about what exactly a metaphor is, how it is constructed or how metaphoric meaning is related to literal meaning
    • Philosophers have widely differing opinions on  the significance of metaphors to philosophy ranging from condemnation  to embrace  

    So, metaphors are a big topic. My position paper will be about how philosophers should deal with metaphors. I will argue that they can either study metaphors, as a philosophical topic, or use them, just like ordinary people. A metaphor or a thought experiment (remember my post on thinking tools?) does not become philosophical because a philosopher uses it, whatever Daniel Dennett says. The interesting bit will be on how you can use metaphors responsibly. I will borrow from my work-life and suggest extensive testing – the only thing to do when you cannot fully predict the result of your metaphoric exploits.

    Just for fun, I want to show you this wonderful video. It is just geometrical shapes moving about, but the curious thing about us humans is that we tend to see a story unfold: