Time to play catch-up again. I came down with a god-awful cold at the end of August, and have been recovering ever since.
Friday, 30 August 2024
Tuesday, 27 August 2024
A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-1960
A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-1960 by Nikhil Krishnan is a history of a way of doing philosophy that was admired by some, reviled by others, and unnoticed by 99.9% of the population.(1) If you know who J L Austin, Gilbert Ryle and Philippa Foot are, you will probably find this a page-turner. If you don’t, and you embark on it, you may wonder who are these people, and how did they get there?
The academic world, especially at Oxford, was very different in the first half of the twentieth century. An undergraduate who passed the legendary Greats examination in Greek and Roman history, philosophy and literature with a first-class honours, who also made a good impression on their tutors, and was prepared to live the life academic, could more or less walk into a job at a university somewhere, the very best getting a Fellowship in one of the Oxford colleges. Tenure at twenty-three, no PhD’s, no post-doc hell, no publication record, no pressure to publish anything, and no enormous student debt. Different days.
The people in this story were very clever boys and girls who could (usually) learn foreign languages quickly, construct arguments in the approved style, and were good “exam-passers”. They had no maths and less science, but many were more familiar with exotic European philosophers than their writing would suggest. Many of the earlier generation served in one back-room way or another in various parts of the Armed Forces during WW2 - J L Austin was in charge of intelligence about the German Army for D-Day - but afterwards made very little of it, partly because they were sworn to secrecy. (I have long suspected that some philosophers got their jobs as a reward for their war work - especially those at Bletchley.)
“Oxford Philosophy” was not influential because it was important philosophy, it was influential because it was philosophy from Oxford. It is almost impossible to appreciate how insular mainstream culture was in the UK in much of the twentieth century. It was dominated by a handful of institutions: Oxbridge and their university presses, the BBC, a handful of publishing houses, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, the Royal Ballet and Opera, the RSC, and a few more. What mattered was whether one held a position within these institutions, or were backed by those who did. Back then, the appointments were made on the basis of how a bunch of chaps felt about the candidates. The outside world would see that Oxford had appointed the man, and assume he was something special, because they believed Oxford was something special. Though he might have little originality or ability, on appointment to some venerable Chair, he would find his reputation back-filled and bolstered to match the status of the position.
The “Oxford Philosophers” were not mainstream cultural figures - except A J Ayer whose Language, Truth and Logic is still in print and selling, and Iris Murdoch, who became a well-known novelist. Otherwise a well-educated electrical engineer would have had no idea who Gilbert Ryle, J L Austin, Peter Strawson, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe and others were, let alone have read the few things they published in their lifetimes.
So what was the fuss about? Ostensibly, it was the proper techniques for “doing philosophy”. The Oxford Philosophers claimed that many of the questions and confusions in philosophy could be “cleared up” by paying careful attention to the concepts involved. The same view was pushed by Wittgenstein at Cambridge, and by the Vienna Circle and its associates. It wasn’t the thesis that was objectionable: it was the method. This made two claims. The first was that careful attention to our everyday language would show that the philosophical problem was really a kind of confusion or mis-understanding.
On this, nobody will deny it is always useful to start any discussion of a concept by checking the dictionary and Wikipedia, to make sure that other people will be thinking about the same thing we are when the hear the words we use. From there, it helps to have a few paradigmatic examples of the concept at work, with some compare-and-contrast to locate it in the conceptual landscape. If there is a group of people making money in some way from the concept, we need to understand who they are and what they are being paid to provide. If there is legislation that uses the concept, we need a glance at that. If it has a history, it might help to read that. If the concept has a technical use in a science, we need to decide how to treat that. If it is being wielded by activists, we need to be aware of that, if only to avoid being distracted by their controversies. Is the concept unique to our native language, or does it have equivalents in other languages, and if it doesn’t, how do they manage without it?
But this is not what the Oxford philosophers meant. Their second claim was that ordinary language, as spoken by the kind of people who get a First in Greats, contains all the concepts and distinctions we need to clear up the confusion. There was no need for appeal to scientific theories, because there were no empirical claims involved in defining the distinctions and concepts. And there was no need for philosophical theories, because, well, all we need are ordinary-language ideas, which are held to be a-theoretical. (Nobody said that last bit out loud, even though the idea that language provides and constrains our conceptual resources, and hence, amongst other things, our ability to make distinctions and analyses, had been around for at least eighty years.)
This, combined with what many felt was a smug and parochial tone, was the reason many other philosophers felt Oxford Philosophy trivialised philosophy. It wasn’t that the Oxford people were wrong, it was that they were shallow. Iris Murdoch said in a review of Ryle’s The Concept of Mind
It was not and still is not my preferred way of doing philosophy. Detailed, tortuous arguments picking apart (as it might be) Jones’ view of Smith’s account of excuses and reasons, leave me feeling uninformed and slightly dizzy. I don’t care that Jones’ views are full of holes, and Smith’s aren’t much better. I want an account of excuses and reasons that learns from the mistakes of those who came earlier, and doesn’t show off its erudition by burdening me with a list of those mistakes and why each is wrong. Unfortunately, it was the preferred way of doing philosophy at the university where I was an undergraduate: I barely survived long enough to make it to the LSE.
The results of an ordinary-language analysis, of some concept being grossly abused by a (as it might be) psychologist in their pop-science book, can be useful for dispelling the confusion and wrong conclusions created by the abuse. But the results must be used in passing, as simple facts, and their source never mentioned, for fear of boring or puzzling the reader. Ordinary language analysis is one of many items in the philosopher’s tool-belt, to be used when appropriate. One should never display one’s philosophical tricks and techniques. Nobody is interested. They want to know about the subject.
In the end, that might have been the reason Oxford Philosophy attracted so much hostility. It was too much about itself, as the work of very clever people can be, its topics chosen not because they were interesting to us, but because they showed off the method and the cleverness.
(1) The population of the UK was about 55m at the time. 0.1% of that would 55,000 people, and that’s an overestimate. Don’t forget there were only around 30 universities in the UK back then. At 40 people per year doing philosophy (about the size of my undergrad class) over 30 years, that’s 36,000 students, plus (say) 500 lecturers and professors.
The academic world, especially at Oxford, was very different in the first half of the twentieth century. An undergraduate who passed the legendary Greats examination in Greek and Roman history, philosophy and literature with a first-class honours, who also made a good impression on their tutors, and was prepared to live the life academic, could more or less walk into a job at a university somewhere, the very best getting a Fellowship in one of the Oxford colleges. Tenure at twenty-three, no PhD’s, no post-doc hell, no publication record, no pressure to publish anything, and no enormous student debt. Different days.
The people in this story were very clever boys and girls who could (usually) learn foreign languages quickly, construct arguments in the approved style, and were good “exam-passers”. They had no maths and less science, but many were more familiar with exotic European philosophers than their writing would suggest. Many of the earlier generation served in one back-room way or another in various parts of the Armed Forces during WW2 - J L Austin was in charge of intelligence about the German Army for D-Day - but afterwards made very little of it, partly because they were sworn to secrecy. (I have long suspected that some philosophers got their jobs as a reward for their war work - especially those at Bletchley.)
“Oxford Philosophy” was not influential because it was important philosophy, it was influential because it was philosophy from Oxford. It is almost impossible to appreciate how insular mainstream culture was in the UK in much of the twentieth century. It was dominated by a handful of institutions: Oxbridge and their university presses, the BBC, a handful of publishing houses, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, the Royal Ballet and Opera, the RSC, and a few more. What mattered was whether one held a position within these institutions, or were backed by those who did. Back then, the appointments were made on the basis of how a bunch of chaps felt about the candidates. The outside world would see that Oxford had appointed the man, and assume he was something special, because they believed Oxford was something special. Though he might have little originality or ability, on appointment to some venerable Chair, he would find his reputation back-filled and bolstered to match the status of the position.
The “Oxford Philosophers” were not mainstream cultural figures - except A J Ayer whose Language, Truth and Logic is still in print and selling, and Iris Murdoch, who became a well-known novelist. Otherwise a well-educated electrical engineer would have had no idea who Gilbert Ryle, J L Austin, Peter Strawson, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe and others were, let alone have read the few things they published in their lifetimes.
So what was the fuss about? Ostensibly, it was the proper techniques for “doing philosophy”. The Oxford Philosophers claimed that many of the questions and confusions in philosophy could be “cleared up” by paying careful attention to the concepts involved. The same view was pushed by Wittgenstein at Cambridge, and by the Vienna Circle and its associates. It wasn’t the thesis that was objectionable: it was the method. This made two claims. The first was that careful attention to our everyday language would show that the philosophical problem was really a kind of confusion or mis-understanding.
On this, nobody will deny it is always useful to start any discussion of a concept by checking the dictionary and Wikipedia, to make sure that other people will be thinking about the same thing we are when the hear the words we use. From there, it helps to have a few paradigmatic examples of the concept at work, with some compare-and-contrast to locate it in the conceptual landscape. If there is a group of people making money in some way from the concept, we need to understand who they are and what they are being paid to provide. If there is legislation that uses the concept, we need a glance at that. If it has a history, it might help to read that. If the concept has a technical use in a science, we need to decide how to treat that. If it is being wielded by activists, we need to be aware of that, if only to avoid being distracted by their controversies. Is the concept unique to our native language, or does it have equivalents in other languages, and if it doesn’t, how do they manage without it?
But this is not what the Oxford philosophers meant. Their second claim was that ordinary language, as spoken by the kind of people who get a First in Greats, contains all the concepts and distinctions we need to clear up the confusion. There was no need for appeal to scientific theories, because there were no empirical claims involved in defining the distinctions and concepts. And there was no need for philosophical theories, because, well, all we need are ordinary-language ideas, which are held to be a-theoretical. (Nobody said that last bit out loud, even though the idea that language provides and constrains our conceptual resources, and hence, amongst other things, our ability to make distinctions and analyses, had been around for at least eighty years.)
This, combined with what many felt was a smug and parochial tone, was the reason many other philosophers felt Oxford Philosophy trivialised philosophy. It wasn’t that the Oxford people were wrong, it was that they were shallow. Iris Murdoch said in a review of Ryle’s The Concept of Mind
[It] evokes a picture of a world in which people play cricket, cook cakes, make simple decisions, remember their childhood and go to the circus; not the world in which they commit sins, fall in love, say prayers or join the Communist Party.Murdoch’s point is that the force of Ryle’s arguments depend in part on the blandness of the examples. We might be willing to make a distinction between this and that when applied to frying an egg, but not when applied to spray-painting shop windows in protest. Nuances that can be heard when the moral volume is low, are lost when the moral volume is turned up, and other sounds become audible. We can accept Ryle’s arguments, but feel that, somehow, the conclusions have a very limited application in our coarser, more chaotic, lives. (Krishnan makes the point that an adequate philosophy must apply to lives in which we both play cricket and commit sins, cook cakes and fall in love, remember our childhoods and say prayers, and go to the circus while members of the Communist Party.)
It was not and still is not my preferred way of doing philosophy. Detailed, tortuous arguments picking apart (as it might be) Jones’ view of Smith’s account of excuses and reasons, leave me feeling uninformed and slightly dizzy. I don’t care that Jones’ views are full of holes, and Smith’s aren’t much better. I want an account of excuses and reasons that learns from the mistakes of those who came earlier, and doesn’t show off its erudition by burdening me with a list of those mistakes and why each is wrong. Unfortunately, it was the preferred way of doing philosophy at the university where I was an undergraduate: I barely survived long enough to make it to the LSE.
The results of an ordinary-language analysis, of some concept being grossly abused by a (as it might be) psychologist in their pop-science book, can be useful for dispelling the confusion and wrong conclusions created by the abuse. But the results must be used in passing, as simple facts, and their source never mentioned, for fear of boring or puzzling the reader. Ordinary language analysis is one of many items in the philosopher’s tool-belt, to be used when appropriate. One should never display one’s philosophical tricks and techniques. Nobody is interested. They want to know about the subject.
In the end, that might have been the reason Oxford Philosophy attracted so much hostility. It was too much about itself, as the work of very clever people can be, its topics chosen not because they were interesting to us, but because they showed off the method and the cleverness.
(1) The population of the UK was about 55m at the time. 0.1% of that would 55,000 people, and that’s an overestimate. Don’t forget there were only around 30 universities in the UK back then. At 40 people per year doing philosophy (about the size of my undergrad class) over 30 years, that’s 36,000 students, plus (say) 500 lecturers and professors.
Friday, 23 August 2024
Another Bench, Another Tree-Shaded Path (Abbey Wood)
Abbey Wood is at one end of the Elizabeth Line, and is next to the very little remains of Lesnes Abbey. The Wood is reached by going upstairs from the platform, crossing the road, turning right and taking a left turn into a small park. Walk along the bottom edge, down the narrow path, and you’ll see the Lesnes Abbey bit. The wood is all the green stuff behind it.
Tuesday, 20 August 2024
How The Far Left Creates The “Far Right”
It’s Newton’s Third Law: a batshit-crazy policy will create a batshit-crazy response. More formally, the intensity of the reaction to a new policy will be in proportion to the extent it varies from commonly-held opinion (if there is one) multiplied by its probability of being turned into law and / or institutional policy.
Instruct medical staff to ask middle-aged men if they are pregnant, and have middle-aged men walk out in mind-blown astonishment.
Push for the adoption of an expensive, noisy and inefficient technology (heat pumps, electric cars) on ideological grounds, you will get a reaction pointing out that it is expensive, noisy and inefficient and your policy is dumb.
Continue to pile on privileges to one group of people, and some of the other groups are going to bear a huge grudge against the over-privileged.
Tell people that a woman can have a beard and a p***s, and a lady writer with more money than Croesus will ridicule the idea on Twitter.
In ordinary circumstances, this would be called “healthy pushback” or “engaged public debate”. But to the Far Left, there can be no debate, since its policies are perfect. Resistance is pure evil.
The “Far Right” only exists to the extent there is a “Far Left” pushing extreme policies into legislation and institutional practice. The Far Left cannot get rid of the Far Right, so it must silence it. Freedom of speech is the freedom to express one’s exact degree of support and admiration for the policy. Anything else is hate, terrorism, Far Right extremism.
Instruct medical staff to ask middle-aged men if they are pregnant, and have middle-aged men walk out in mind-blown astonishment.
Push for the adoption of an expensive, noisy and inefficient technology (heat pumps, electric cars) on ideological grounds, you will get a reaction pointing out that it is expensive, noisy and inefficient and your policy is dumb.
Continue to pile on privileges to one group of people, and some of the other groups are going to bear a huge grudge against the over-privileged.
Tell people that a woman can have a beard and a p***s, and a lady writer with more money than Croesus will ridicule the idea on Twitter.
In ordinary circumstances, this would be called “healthy pushback” or “engaged public debate”. But to the Far Left, there can be no debate, since its policies are perfect. Resistance is pure evil.
The “Far Right” only exists to the extent there is a “Far Left” pushing extreme policies into legislation and institutional practice. The Far Left cannot get rid of the Far Right, so it must silence it. Freedom of speech is the freedom to express one’s exact degree of support and admiration for the policy. Anything else is hate, terrorism, Far Right extremism.
Friday, 16 August 2024
Gain and Volume
Yep, it’s tech time again. There are numerous explanations of these two features of an amplifier, and all those I have seen don’t explain it very well. Mostly because they don’t use a model of an amplifier, which I’m going to do.
Picture your guitar amp. At one end is the guitar jack, which carries a tiny, tiny current from the pickups. If that was transferred across to the speaker, we wouldn’t hear a thing. Nothing like enough power. So we need some more power from somewhere - which is why the amp is plugged into the mains, to feed a transformer that feeds the amp’s circuitry. That feed is run through some kind of “amplifying widget”, which might be a valve, a transistor, some combination of both, or some other device.
This widget takes the guitar signal in one connection, the transformer feed in another connection, and combines them in such a way that the signal from the guitar affects the current from the transformer flowing through the widget. (See electronics textbooks for details.) If the widget works properly, the output will be a signal that looks like the input from the guitar, but on a large-enough scale to drive the speaker.
In summary…
Guitar input signal -> widget
+
Current from transformer -> widget
=
More powerful copy of the guitar signal from widget to the loudspeaker
Gain controls are on the power input side of the amplifying widget. Turning the Gain up increases the amount of power into the amplifying widget, and increases makes the output signal… Gain at 0 = signal direct from guitar with no increase in power, Gain at 10 = guitar signal amplified to maximum input power
Now here’s the thing. The amplifying widget will change how it responds as more power is applied to it. That’s why turning up the Gain often produces distortion (unless the widget has a kilometer of “headroom”). But when we adjust the volume, it won’t change the way the widget works, because the volume is on the output side, after the widget has done its thing.
However, adjusting the volume will affect the power going to the speaker, and that will affect the way the speaker reacts. Less power and it won’t be able to transmit the fine details in the signal loud enough for us to hear. Which is why a crunchy distorted tone at high volume turns to a nasty fizz at low volumes.
So that’s that.
Picture your guitar amp. At one end is the guitar jack, which carries a tiny, tiny current from the pickups. If that was transferred across to the speaker, we wouldn’t hear a thing. Nothing like enough power. So we need some more power from somewhere - which is why the amp is plugged into the mains, to feed a transformer that feeds the amp’s circuitry. That feed is run through some kind of “amplifying widget”, which might be a valve, a transistor, some combination of both, or some other device.
This widget takes the guitar signal in one connection, the transformer feed in another connection, and combines them in such a way that the signal from the guitar affects the current from the transformer flowing through the widget. (See electronics textbooks for details.) If the widget works properly, the output will be a signal that looks like the input from the guitar, but on a large-enough scale to drive the speaker.
In summary…
Guitar input signal -> widget
+
Current from transformer -> widget
=
More powerful copy of the guitar signal from widget to the loudspeaker
Gain controls are on the power input side of the amplifying widget. Turning the Gain up increases the amount of power into the amplifying widget, and increases makes the output signal… Gain at 0 = signal direct from guitar with no increase in power, Gain at 10 = guitar signal amplified to maximum input power
Volume controls are on the power output side of the amplifying widget. Turning the Volume up lets more of that power pass to the speaker, so it gets louder… Volume at 0 = no output power, Volume at 10 = as much out as the Gain creates.
Now here’s the thing. The amplifying widget will change how it responds as more power is applied to it. That’s why turning up the Gain often produces distortion (unless the widget has a kilometer of “headroom”). But when we adjust the volume, it won’t change the way the widget works, because the volume is on the output side, after the widget has done its thing.
However, adjusting the volume will affect the power going to the speaker, and that will affect the way the speaker reacts. Less power and it won’t be able to transmit the fine details in the signal loud enough for us to hear. Which is why a crunchy distorted tone at high volume turns to a nasty fizz at low volumes.
So that’s that.
Tuesday, 13 August 2024
Recording With The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and Helix Effects
Regular readers will remember the problems I, and everyone else with a Katana, had with recording and playback through the thing. I gave up in the end.
I’ve been trying recording on the iPhone / iPad, using the Lexis Audio Editor, which is intuitively easier to use than the iOS Garageband. For my simple mind, anyway. Record with the mic, playback via the Apple dongle and the Katana Aux In. It kinda worked, but not inspiringly.
Then I got the Helix HX Effects. I’ve beenplaying with it exploring its functionality for a while. I had registered that it treated the SEND and RECEIVE ports as blocks that could be put in the signal chain. I had got as far as using a RECEIVE port / block to receive music from the phone and pass it on to the Katana.
That works because the Helix software lets us create two logical paths (A and B) between the device inputs and outputs. It’s actually easier to see-and-do on the control software than it is to explain (which is how it should be). Put all the guitar-related effects on one path, and use the other path to take the play-along music. Join the paths together at the end, so the play-along music is unaffected by the guitar effects. Works nicely.
One afternoon, I started thinking about recording again. I don’t want to use headphones, and I want to hear the sound of the guitar from the amp. That was always a problem in the past, because I was getting the guitar effects from the amp. Ever since I got the HX Effects, the amp has been set to the Clean channel and all the effects turned off. EQ’s at mid-day. It’s almost tonally transparent.
The following question now makes sense. Can I use a SEND port on the HX Effects to send a copy of the signal to an interface? The interface connects to the laptop via USB and a recording program can use the USB as an input. Also, can I take the audio out from the laptop and plug that in to the Aux In of the Katana. The HX Effects is connected to the Katana via the L/Mono output socket as usual.
I have one signal path from the guitar to HX Effects to the amp; a separate path from the HX Effects to the laptop to the recording software; and another from the recording playback to the amp. So there’s no feedback loop.
And even better… there’s no way background noise can get into the signal chain because there are no microphones!
I’m using Audacity. It’s recording software with some extras, rather than a full-featured DAW, so it will do nicely for my simple mind. I made sure it could record one track while playing back another, which is kinda key to the whole thing. I can.
All I need to be able to do is send one copy of the signal to the L/Mono output, and another copy to a SEND socket. Which is kinda the reverse of bringing in a signal from the RECEIVE port.
I tested everything I could without actually getting the interface. Everything worked the way I needed it to.
Pull the trigger. The interface of choice for the amateur is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, which has two inputs: either instrument jack plug or mic three-pin. (Mics need a lot more signal boost than guitars.) I need one short guitar cable (male-to-male jack plugs) to connect the HX Effects SEND to the Scarlett instrument in.
Arrives within 24 hours thanks to Amazon Prime. Took about fifteen minutes to set up, including an online firmware update. Another five minutes to set the recording volume for the guitar.
Now I have to deal with the well-known phenomenon of “recording klutz”, where hitherto fluent playing suddenly misses the beat, because someone turned the red light on. Also with the fact that my playing is, well, not quite metronomic.
Which is why we record ourselves. It’s one thing to know you’re a bit clunky while playing, but another to hear it in playback. It’s so much more embarrassing in playback.
I’ve been trying recording on the iPhone / iPad, using the Lexis Audio Editor, which is intuitively easier to use than the iOS Garageband. For my simple mind, anyway. Record with the mic, playback via the Apple dongle and the Katana Aux In. It kinda worked, but not inspiringly.
Then I got the Helix HX Effects. I’ve been
That works because the Helix software lets us create two logical paths (A and B) between the device inputs and outputs. It’s actually easier to see-and-do on the control software than it is to explain (which is how it should be). Put all the guitar-related effects on one path, and use the other path to take the play-along music. Join the paths together at the end, so the play-along music is unaffected by the guitar effects. Works nicely.
One afternoon, I started thinking about recording again. I don’t want to use headphones, and I want to hear the sound of the guitar from the amp. That was always a problem in the past, because I was getting the guitar effects from the amp. Ever since I got the HX Effects, the amp has been set to the Clean channel and all the effects turned off. EQ’s at mid-day. It’s almost tonally transparent.
The following question now makes sense. Can I use a SEND port on the HX Effects to send a copy of the signal to an interface? The interface connects to the laptop via USB and a recording program can use the USB as an input. Also, can I take the audio out from the laptop and plug that in to the Aux In of the Katana. The HX Effects is connected to the Katana via the L/Mono output socket as usual.
I have one signal path from the guitar to HX Effects to the amp; a separate path from the HX Effects to the laptop to the recording software; and another from the recording playback to the amp. So there’s no feedback loop.
And even better… there’s no way background noise can get into the signal chain because there are no microphones!
I’m using Audacity. It’s recording software with some extras, rather than a full-featured DAW, so it will do nicely for my simple mind. I made sure it could record one track while playing back another, which is kinda key to the whole thing. I can.
All I need to be able to do is send one copy of the signal to the L/Mono output, and another copy to a SEND socket. Which is kinda the reverse of bringing in a signal from the RECEIVE port.
I tested everything I could without actually getting the interface. Everything worked the way I needed it to.
Pull the trigger. The interface of choice for the amateur is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, which has two inputs: either instrument jack plug or mic three-pin. (Mics need a lot more signal boost than guitars.) I need one short guitar cable (male-to-male jack plugs) to connect the HX Effects SEND to the Scarlett instrument in.
Arrives within 24 hours thanks to Amazon Prime. Took about fifteen minutes to set up, including an online firmware update. Another five minutes to set the recording volume for the guitar.
Now I have to deal with the well-known phenomenon of “recording klutz”, where hitherto fluent playing suddenly misses the beat, because someone turned the red light on. Also with the fact that my playing is, well, not quite metronomic.
Which is why we record ourselves. It’s one thing to know you’re a bit clunky while playing, but another to hear it in playback. It’s so much more embarrassing in playback.
Friday, 9 August 2024
The Geometrical Kit In The Playground Picture
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