“Just because I believe don’t mean I don’t think as well”

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It’s been just over 40 years since Station to Station was released, arguably Bowie’s (and by definition rock’s) finest album. I realize that it’s not immediately obvious that this work deserves this slot — it certainly didn’t at the time — but somehow we sensed something rather unusual was going on and for Bowie fans (and critics) who by now had been trained up to not be musical fuckwits, this was the first big test and were happy to go along with it. It is simultaneously Bowie’s most philosophically and emotionally desperate (the eponymously named Low was the absolute low point) and warm album going from dissonance to full stretch crooner and much more in between. It is usually cast as a transitional/bridge album, inferring that perhaps it is neither fish nor foul, and in some sense this is true — but taken as a bridge, it can also connote a highpoint. Here is a superb piece of rock journalism by Ben Graham (I don’t know his work but he reminds me of Melody Maker‘s great Chris Welch, from the heyday of rock journalism). Here’s the insiders’ take on STS: “I think David’s too intelligent to try to follow one philosophy.” Anyway, here Ben Graham assesses the album and the circumstances of its coming to pass.

‘Station to Station’ isn’t about trains, despite being written while the notoriously aerophobic Bowie was touring America and Europe by rail; instead, it refers to the fourteen Stations of the Cross, which Bowie also equates to the eleven Sephirot of the Tree of Life in the Jewish Kabbalah- hence, “one magical movement from Keter to Malkuth,” the songs most enigmatic lyric, which refers to the descent from the Crown of Creation to the Physical Kingdom, or from one end of the tree to the other.

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Rationality and the true human condition

Herbert Simon

The fifth in a series of excerpts from Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon.

Ron Sun

The notion of rationality is important to many fields in social and behavioral sciences. Herbert Simon’s seminal work on “bounded rationality” and “satisficing” led to broadened conceptions of rationality, which significantly impacted a number of fields in social and behavioral sciences. In this article, I would like to further explore the notion of rationality on the basis of Simon’s work.

First, in this regard, I believe that it may be necessary to go beyond Simon’s notions of “bounded rationality” and “satisficing”, for example, in dealing with limitations and variations in actual human rationality. Furthermore, I believe that it may be necessary to go beyond the notion of rationality as optimization of a utility function. I will argue that we need to take into serious consideration the true human condition in this regard, that is, actual human nature (especially the actual human psychology), in defining or understanding the notion of rationality.

In the 1950’s, Herbert Simon proposed his theory of “bounded rationality” that tried to reflect real human abilities to reason and to make decisions, in relation to his work in economics and organization theory (Simon, 1957, 1991). This notion of a limited kind of rationality of Simon’s might have in some way enabled the social sciences to move beyond the then prevailing theories in economics and in other branches of social sciences. But the questions now are: does it go far enough in “respecting” human reality? What is the true human condition in this regard? Is the true human condition sufficient captured by Simon’s theory of rationality?

It is my belief that the true human condition (human psychology) was, unfortunately, not sufficiently addressed yet in this line of work. This point applies to Simon’s treatment of rationality, and also to Simon’s approach to studying cognition within the realm of cognitive science and artificial intelligence (which paralleled his work in economics and organization theory). In contrast, in this article, what I want to emphasize is exactly such true human condition that I believe has not been sufficiently examined in Simon’s approach. I will do so based on the framework of a comprehensive computational theory of the human mind, that is, a computational cognitive architecture, taking into account some very human facets of human nature.

In this chapter, I will first discuss what rationality means in various contexts (while questioning this very notion). Then I will discuss some findings regarding the unconscious mind, which shows various tendencies that appear to contradict the notion of rationality. I will then present a theoretical framework that addresses all of these facets in mechanistic and process-based way (but not necessarily mathematically). The application of this framework in exploring issues in social, cultural, political, and organizational contexts are then briefly sketched. This discussion will draw upon the ideas from Reber (1989) regarding the unconscious mind, H. Murray (1938) regarding basic needs or desires, as well as others, in addition to Simon’s own ideas.

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John McWhorter: public intellectual par excellence

John McWhorter

In a crowded field of public intellectuals, John McWhorter stands head and shoulders above most. He has a genuine commitment to the Socratic method (i.e. intellectual honesty), never peddling an over-rehearsed hardened position that he’s been married to since the year dot. One always feels that he really values the provisionality of intellectual discourse and is always open to be convinced of countervailing positions. Unlike many whose vanity is so easily massaged (wannabe public intellectuals seduced even if they are not paid a dime to meet the voracious appetite for “content”), John never merely takes on the role as “expert” or “brand/virtue signaling” totem, fulfilling echo chamber/parti pris expectations. Even when one feels that he might be on the ropes, he never resorts to playing the badge of honor card (“Well, I am an x, y, z, therefore . . . ) a strategy typically used to shut conversation down. I always get a fresh, unexpected, well-informed and reasoned perspective from him, even if the conclusion may be one I’d be at odds with. Under these circumstances one can fully accept and appreciate countervailing positions without it becoming an either-or situation. So here’s the thing: John has a true commitment to liberality, conversability and civility — virtues that have been severely corroded over the past decades both within the academy and throughout public life. Moreover, John doesn’t “play the role” of professorial know-all — his tone, comportment, and poise is so very natural. One gets a sense that John would be just the same chap over a pint of beer — and this would be possible since divergent views would be a rather shallow determinate mitigating against friendship.

Both John and Glenn Loury are a fabulous paring: whatever they talk about one always comes away with a sense of having learnt something, a model of civility and mutual respect which in no way entails pussyfooting around controversial and complex ideas replete with phony euphemisms. Speaking of John, he was the star performer at the recent debate on free speech. As debates go, this format was the best I’ve come across (and that includes the many Oxford Union debates I attended). The moderator was superb as were the questions from the students — this is the way it should be. I for one didn’t call the result but no doubt the standard recriminations/excuses will be proffered. Check out the debate. Maybe there is a glimmer of hope for us in this overly polarized and vulgarized culture. Update: see The Atlantic‘s take on the debate. 

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David Egan’s last stand

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Our great Southern songwriter lays in a recliner, feet propped up into a blanket that covers legs made thin by a cancer whose patience has worn out. Those legs used to amble around one hell of man — a tall, ruggedly handsome man’s man and raconteur gifted in music and conversation. — full article here.

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Walker Percy Wednesday 74

walker percy

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In New Orleans I have noticed that people are happiest when they are going to funerals, making money, taking care of the dead, or putting on masks at Mardi Gras so nobody knows who they are.

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I like your banal little cathedral in the Vieux Carré. It is set down squarely in the midst of the greatest single concentration of drunks, drugheads, whores, pimps, queers, sodomists in the hemisphere. But isn’t that where cathedrals are supposed to be? It, like the city, has something else even more comforting to me, a kind of triumphant mediocrity.

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The Creoles have the secret of living ordinary lives well.

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Could it be true all one needs to know nowadays is what one wants?

Free on the Inside: Jazz Fest eat your heart out

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I’m astonished that the music press, especially the Southern-based press, haven’t given this concert any mention — at least so far as I can determine. It has the most distinguished of lineups one can imagine and is exquisitely performed — Jamie Davis, Scotty Barnhart, Dennis Wilson, Ken Miller, Greg Errico (drummer with The Family Stone!!!!), Wycliffe Gordon, Lady Bianca, Charles McNeal, Roger Glenn, Arnett Hayes, and Topsy Chapman (misspelt as Tracy on the album) and the Angola Inmate Choir. A lineup such as this would be a dream ticket at Jazz Fest. There is no youtube footage of the show but if you are a fan of that wonderful and powerful mix of big band, jazz, gospel and funk, this album won’t disappoint. Inferring from Governor Burl Cain’s brief remarks, there was a cockup on the organizational front: the Rodeo Arena could have been filled. This said, the controlled space of the Chapel has made for an exceptionally good recording. And by the way, if like me you think that Lou Rawls was an infinitely more talented vocalist than Sinatra (controversial I know), then Jamie Davis really is your man. (To Sinatra’s credit he said that Rawls had “the classiest singing and silkiest chops in the singing game”). Please support this small musician run independent label.

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The Mangy Parrot 4

The Mangy Parrot

The silliest thing some parents do is to make their son become a lawyer or a priest by brute force, even when he has no vocation for such a career, nor any talent for letters: a baneful process, whose pernicious effects are daily bemoaned when we see all these paper-pushing lawyers, murderous doctors, and ignorant, dissolute priests.

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This Supreme Being is certainly the one and only true omniscient, for He is the one and only one who truly knows everything that can be known; and in this sense, admitting another man to be omniscient would be to admit another God, an absurdity far from the minds of even those who honor the profound Leibniz with this pompous title.

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Donkeys enter the colleges and universities every day to deliver loads of coal or stone, and when they leave, they are still the same dumb brutes they were when they entered.

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Right was Terence to say that mothers abet their children’s wickedness and obstruct the fathers who would correct them.

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From the way I began, you will see that I was completely depraved. And so I went on to study philosophy.

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From The Sciences of the Artificial to Cognitive History

Herbert Simon

The fourth in a series of excerpts from Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon.

Subrata Dasgupta

It is well known that Herbert Simon was a 20th century scientific polymath who made seminal contributions to the social sciences, behavioral sciences, design theory, computer science, and the philosophy of science (Dasgupta, 2003a, 2003b). My interest in Simon in this essay, however, lies in his remarkable and highly original book, The Sciences of the Artificial (Simon, 1996). In this work (henceforth referred to as Sciences), which in a sense unifies his multidisciplinary contributions, Simon dwells on the concept and nature of the human-made or artificial world, the things that populate it – artifacts – and in what sense and how the making of the artificial yields to scientific investigation.

In this chapter I wish to explore a particular consequence of the ideas put forth in Sciences. I wish to show how some of the key concepts advanced in it affords a conceptual framework for a (relatively) new historical discipline for the study of human creativity, the creative tradition, and the intellectual tradition. This discipline is called cognitive history.

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Happy Birthday Fats

"Fats" Domino

Fats is 88! American Masters is presenting the broadcast premiere of the recent Fats Domino documentary on February 26, his 88th birthday. Fats’ comeback album is really worth a listen, short but very sweet.

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