Reply to Clark Goble Tue, 4 Jun 2002 16:13:02 -0600

Hello Clark,

I have been thinking about your comment about talking past each other.  That
may be part of the process, but I want to talk directly to you, and make
myself clear about what I am trying to say.

CG:
Yes, but a play performed is similarly different from the play as it exists
as a script. Just look at the different manifestations of Shakespeare's
plays. This is my point. There already are thinkers who have moved beyond
doing philosophy as a written set of arguments. If we look at where they
succeeded in making this break as well as where they failed, it will be
helpful for our analysis of film. Especially since people have had a
difficult time coming up with really good examples of film as philosophy.

DS:
Thought experiment,  Walk down a street with a Blind person.  This takes
into account embodiment in the sighted person and the blind person.
Describe the landscape to the blind person as you walk along.  One sees for
example how when something comes up to potentially trip the blind person how
the rapid need for words to describe an obstacle clashes with the sheer
ability to name the problem.  The blind person trips.  One stands there
searching for the words.

If I am looking I see the problem that caused the tripping.  I don't have
the words (isn't that conceivable?).  The cognition (I see it!!!! coming)
precedes the words.  I might laboriously construct the names for the
problem, but the next incident brings up more words to find and more
difficulties.  Hence we see how filmosophy is greater than the capacity of
words and contemporary language to produce knowledge.  That we can address
communications in a different way than words allow us.

Suppose we took a video camera along.  We are recording the walk as we go.
We can see the tripping place and know that is recorded on the hard drive
disc.  Maybe we can stop the movie on an appropriate frame and highlight the
particular form that offers a chance to trip.  We are making an object or
noun to be used of the frame.  We want to avoid that obstacle.  The tape is
rolling, the words don't come out of my mouth, and  what am I supposed to do
with the video camera to use to communicate the danger to the poor disabled
woman being used for a thought experiment?

I want to be able to see the picture and use the picture to communicate the
problem to the blind woman where the chestnut tree root appears and
communicate that to the woman.  I have not attached any words to that frame,
I don't know what to call that object (aren't there plenty of inarticulate
people out there?).

The frame is holding phenomenological content.  What we see is the constant
vast flow of existence.  The frame is like a human retina.  How much
vocabulary does a single person have to describe the unlimited things and
objects out there?  10,000 words?  100,000 words, 1 million, one billion, 1
quadrillion?  How many words do we need to label the vast ocean of
phenomenon that is flow on the video frame?

We can assume that words will not suffice.  We instead want the movie to
attach to the specific tree root we see.  We don't want to actually use
every new moment in the flow to make a new frame (word) due to the
limitations of memory.  We want to understand how to take something and
remember it so we can avoid the problem in the future as parsimoniously as
possible.

CG:
While I've enjoyed reading about people's examples with Woody Allen and
others, I'm not sure I'm convinced those are *more* philosophical than
Kubrick films or the like. Thus far the best examples I can think of are in
the documentary arena. But even those fall somewhat short of what I think we
are reaching for.

Simply discussing how clips of film can exist as independent semantic signs
isn't to me the real thrust of the discussion. (I recognize that to you it
is - so there is an essential sense in which we'll talk past one an other)
To me we can define nearly anything as a sign. That's why I prefer to treat
everything with the language of semiotics. This is why I reject those who
suggest images shouldn't be viewed as being read. While how we interpret the
image of a tree is more complex than how we might interpret a sentence, I
feel that the same basic processes are going on.

DS:
I demonstrated above that seeing is not the same basic process as
interpreting a sentence.  The missing issue in words is the phenomenological
aspect of the frame.

CG:
As I see the issue, discussing non-textual signs is important. However we
must first see how philosophy is wedded to textual signs.

DS:
I don't see a frame as wedded to text or signs cognitively.  Your claim
ignores the phenomenological status of the information flow.  You anticipate
that a text can be constructed for all existence (phenomenology of being).

CG:
I think someone (Richard?) brought this issue up originally. He suggested
that philosophy arose when arguments were written down and the referred to
and quoted. I'm not sure I buy that completely, but there is a lot of truth
to it.

DS:
Writing allows us to capture (remember) experience and meditate upon it over
generations of time.  The point is that when a tool is available it shapes
our understanding (philosophy) of the world.  Someone who doesn't write
might memorize history and pass it on via poetic tradition.  Their view of
memory is quite different than one who writes a grocery list.

CG:
I think there are two places to look for the break from traditional use of
text for philosophy. The first is back with Plato who uses dialogs rather
than pure written arguments. This parallels a play, to a degree. Further,
despite claims to the contrary, Plato's arguments often hinge on style (what
isn't in the straightforward meaning of the prose - what you might call
"emotions") When we get to Nietzsche this "style" is emphasized over
traditional linear arguments. So much so that he emphasizes tropes such as
irony and the like and with _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ has a fairly severe
break with traditional styles of philosophy.

DS:
You fail to conceptualize vision based communication.

CG:
I don't want to imply that these are the only ones who emphasize a change in
style for philosophy. I just think that by looking at the other ways of
doing philosophy we gain an insight into philosophy itself.

As I see what you are suggesting, you want to do a kind of traditional
philosophy but with "clips" as semantic units in a new language for
philosophy.

DS:
Not quite but I think my thought experiment clarifies that about the basic
problem of language like use of movies.  I am aware of the limitations of
linear clips of movies.  What does it mean to see motion?  The rare times
that someone had a head injury and lost the ability to see motion but
retained the rest of sight, their report of their experience tells us
something critical about seeing motion.  They said if they saw a car driving
along the street they would see it as if suspended in motion, and then it
would disappear, and reappear suddenly elsewhere in a way they couldn't
know.  This can be translated thusly, I am sitting in a room, and someone
comes in the room, goes to a chair and sits down.  I know the person who
came in the doorway is the same person who sat down.  That is a wholeness is
imposed upon something we see by the sense of seeing motion.  One has to be
able to extract the sense of wholeness from a movie sequence.  That is what
it means to see motion and what it would mean to convert motion to a verb
like function in a language like use of movies.

The contrast between wholeness (dorsal vision) and the fragmentary nature of
the ventral vision channel is where we want to understand the
phenomenological balance of knowing.

Thanks

Doyle