Dissolving dualities
in
mind, music and mechanism
Meurig Beynon
Computer Science
University of Warwick
Outline of talk
 dualities in mind, machine and music
 perspectives on these dualities
 Empirical Modelling
 dissolving dualities
Dualities in mind, music and machine
experience as “mere consciousness”
… experience as offering content
music as formal pattern
… music as affective experience
computation as an abstract mechanism
… computation as effecting meaningful change
experience as encompassing consciousness
… experience as offering content
music as formal pattern
… music as affective experience
computation as an abstract mechanism
… computation as effecting meaningful change
perceived as content-free, formal
… content-laden, hermeneutic in character
Duality in music
To what extent
 is composition building formal structures?
 is performance literally interpreting notes?
 is musical analysis a scientific process?
cf. Mahler’s dictum:
“the best in music is not in the notes”
Duality in mind …
experience as “mere consciousness”
… experience as offering content
William James: Does Consciousness Exist?
[One philosophical position] supposes that
consciousness is one element, moment, factor call it what you like - of an experience of
essentially dualistic inner constitution, from which,
if you abstract the content, the consciousness will
remain revealed to its own eye.
... the usual view is that by mental subtraction we
can separate the two factors of experience ... - not
isolating them entirely, but distinguishing them
enough to know that they are two.
William James on Consciousness
Experience, I believe, has no such inner
duplicity; and the separation of it into
consciousness and content comes, not by
way of subtraction, but by way of addition the addition, to a given concrete piece of it,
of other sets of experiences, in connection
with which severally its use or function may
be of two different kinds.
Duality in computing
computation as an abstract mechanism
… computation as effecting meaningful change
Duality in a computational context
Turing: interpret the input-output relation
… an abstract formal interpretation
meaning of a program is more than this …
… Brian Cantwell-Smith ‘process semantics’
Cantwell-Smith - process semantics …
Musical work vs computer program
state-as-experienced not just “input-output”
behaviour cf. harmony, melody, form
music as experienced not merely executed
music as both experienced and executed
semantic associations exceptionally rich and
context-dependent cf. Diabelli variations –
decorated, minimalist, quoting Don Giovanni
Theme - Vivace
Var III – Poco Allegro
Var XIII – Vivace
Var XXII – Allegro molto
William James: Radical Empiricism (1910)
The primacy of conjunction in experience
The irreducibility of such conjunction
cf. philosophical attitudes that invoke the
transcendent to restore conjunction
traditional empiricism focuses on disjunction
Edelman on “Jamesian properties”
Consciousness is a form of awareness that:
… is continuous but continually changing
… is private
… has intentionality
… does not exhaust the properties of its objects.
Edelman on consciousness
“computer and machine models of the brain
and mind do not work”
… need “an alternative organising principle”
C and C´ respectively designate a conscious
process and its underlying neural activity
Edelman on causality
C designates a conscious process
C´ designates its underlying neural activity
C as the phenomenal transform of C´
C is dependent as a psychological state on a physical
state C´ that is causal ...
… reentry as the basis for spatiotemporal correlation
The dualist view of the relationship between
mechanism and mind in classical computer
science doesn’t do justice to musical meanings
This motivates an alternative perspective on
how formal and hermeneutic perspectives on
mechanism can be related …
Computing for the humanities …
Willard McCarty on plurality of modelling …
analogy
experiment
simulation
map
diagram
representation ...
Humanities Computing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
Demanding a more liberal interpretative framework
than computational science offers …
Polanyi: The analysis of a skilful feat in terms of its
constituent motions remains always incomplete …
[cf.] the distinctive touch of a pianist … common
experience shows that no skill can be acquired by
learning its constituent motions separately …
Knowing and Being (Mind, 1961)
… but also need to admit subjectivity,
ambiguity and negotiation of meaning …
cf. Polanyi’s observation that:
The true meaning of the heliocentric system was
discovered only by Newton, but it was
anticipated 140 years earlier by Copernicus.
Empirical Modelling as a foundation for
Humanities Computing …?
Extensive research into an alternative approach
to computing called Empirical Modelling (EM)
Empirical Modelling views computing as the
construction of artefacts resembling the works of
art and music, and the construals of scholars of
the humanities and experimental scientists
Empirical Modelling
is to
conventional programming
AS
recreational walking
is to
space age transport
In the classical theory of computing
focus on goal of computation
optimisation to purpose and function
foundation in formal language
theory-laden conception of science
A JUGS program
• input-output relations associated with menu options
• use cases – can fill, empty, pour from jugs
• content cannot exceed capacity
• the only state changes are those accessible via options
An extract from the
‘JUGS’ program, as
programmed for the
BBC microcomputer by
Robin Bartlett on
August 26th 1982
procedures
subroutines
assignment
transfer of control
iteration
alternation
input-output statements
Modelling with definitions
 express the current status and state of a
model by a family of definitions
 definitions model dependencies conjunctive relations given in experience
 cf. definitions in cells of a spreadsheet:
semantics unfolds in interaction over time
Dependencies in the JUGS model
finish is ((contentA==target) ||
(contentB==target)) &&
!updating;
finish depends on
contentA, contentB,
target, updating;
valid5  ‘can perform a pour action’
valid7  ‘can pour from B to A’
hence: “A not full and B not empty”
valid7 is valid1 && valid4;
valid6  ‘can pour from A to B’
valid5 is valid6 || valid7;
The phenomenological aspect …
… your precious draft / your previous draft
… romantic / semantic web
… ape’s ‘water bird’ for swan
… liberates a different kind of engagement
with sense-making …
- openness to interpretation beyond what is
explicitly and intentionally expressed …
] … the content of Jug A now exceeds its capacity
… but Jug A is not deemed to be full
- power of experience to make association
Marrying two previously unrelated things ...
… making unexpected relationships
‘Start with the specific, the small … not the
abstract and general, but horribly particular’
‘marrying two previously unrelated things’
[Don Paterson, The Dark Art of Poetry]
Arcana in Empirical Modelling …
%eden
/* connect the keyboard with the
jugs model */
keyboard is mkinterval(contentA,
contentB);
/* make jugs resemble strings */
widthA is widthstr;
widthB is widthstr;
widthstr is 2;
widthstr is 1;
capA = 12;
capB = 12;
%scout
# put the jugs / G&D string model to
the L, and further down screen
base = {2.c, 16.r};
%eden
/* make the strings represent G and
D on the keyboard */
keyboard is mkinterval(contentA+19,
contentB+26);
/* display the triads to which the
current pair of notes belongs */
targ = "";
totstat is str(tail(view1));
Empirical Modelling as it relates to music
 the phenomenological is primary
cf. William James’s attitude to the ‘life-world’
 validation is in personal experience
 music / humanities computing as concerned
with how one experience knows another
… and to dissolving dualities …
plurality through “classification of experience”:
“subjectivity and objectivity are affairs not of
what an experience is aboriginally made of, but
of its classification” [William James]
… likewise
conscious / automatic in performance
formal / hermeneutic in composition etc
For more background:
http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/modelling/
http://empublic.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/projects/
kaleidoscopeBeynon2005/posters/erlkonigPoster.pdf
Beynon, Russ and McCarty, Human Computing: Modelling
with Meaning, Literary and Linguistic Computing [to appear]
Beynon, Radical Empiricism, Empirical Modelling and the
nature of knowing, Journal of Pragmatics & Cognition 2005
James’s Radical Empiricism
… the first great pitfall from which [RE] will save us
is an artificial conception of the relations between
knower and known …
… all the while, in the very bosom of the finite
experience, every conjunction required to make
the relation intelligible is given in full
Why insist that knowing is a static relation out of
time when it practically seems so much a function
of our active life?