pumpkinstrokemarrow

And then, drawn by the word consciousness in the title, a subject in which I take an interest, I try to read a hefty review of a philosophy book, the review being by that philosophical eminence Jerry Fodor. Slightly irritated by his homely style, thinly scattered with slightly quaint slang. (Odd to be irritated as it is a style I try for myself). But he makes a lot of waves about two examples. First example is that we have two identical glasses full of what appears to be water. But one is full of water and one is full of something else altogether. Second example is that of a well camouflaged brown moth sitting on a brown tree trunk. I gaze intently at that bit of the tree trunk, not seeing the moth, at least in the sense that I am not aware of it. Fodor, and the book he is reviewing, manage to make an awful lot of this sort of thing. It seems that it bears hard on what we mean by a concept. But I think they are both barking up the wrong tree. Trying to tie down what a concept - like tree or number 2 - in abstract is not the way forward. What we should be trying to do is work out how the brain - which is only a fancy computer - does things. For example, what is the balance of information flow when I see a dog? Does the dog inform my concept of dog or does my prior concept of dog inform what I see? (An issue which, to be fair, gets a mention in the review). And it may well be that the concept we have of concept does not map at all cleanly onto the goings on brainside. But trying to find out is more worthy - at least more interesting as far as I am concerned - than the sort of speculations that push their buttons. Remain unconvinced that philosophy as presently practised is worth the shelf space. But presumably somebody has been so convinced so I rest content, if aside.

Next puzzle comes from the world of marketing. I have been pondering about the use of tokens like 'old-fashioned', 'home made' and 'artificial' in advertising. All tokens which to my mind are bivalent; that is to say, depending on context, they might have a bad flavour or a good flavour. So if you say that the jam has been made according to an old-fashioned recipe you are puffing it. But if you say that the vacuum cleaner has been made according to an old-fashioned design you are probably panning it. Now one can usually assume that advertisements are more into puff than pan, but that is not good enough. If the word is to carry some positive weight, it is not enough to be able to work out that that is what the advertiser intended. The weight, the good association has to be there. So when advertisers use these words, how can they be sure? Do they do surveys and tests to check things out? Do they avoid such words?

PS I included artificial in the list as I am amused by its more or less entirely negative connotation. But I am sure that there was a time when to be made by art, rather than just landing on the dung heap from somewhere, was regarded as a good thing. So bivalency of a sort.

Worn down by all this, cleared the brain with a visit to the tip at Wandsworth, with their array of giant walk in bins, each about the size of a standard container. We had an empty one all to ourselves. Very satisfying way to dispose of a car load of mixed rubbish. Must have been room for 100 or more such loads in the thing. The attendants did not seem anything like as fussed about recycling as the ones in Surrey. Nor did we have to present any credentials.

One day I shall have to try and organise a visit to the giant waste transfer station next door. Giant red shed of complicated shape. It might involve the lorries full of rubbish driving up a great ramp to dump their stuff onto a gravity feed conveyor belt - rather in the way the cows have to walk up a great ramp at slaughterhouses so that their carcases can be gravity fed in the same way.