h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't have no kick against modern jazz, unless they try to play it too damn fast, and change the beauty of the melody and make it sound just like a symphony. That's why I go for this rock and roll music... (Chuck Berry - Rock and Roll Music)

What it must've been like to live when jazz was considered modern.

I would think that innate talents would be things directly conducive to survival. I would suspect then that music is not one of them. Perhaps it is linked to other skills somehow, or perhaps you just have to learn very young to reach the giddiest peaks of ability. But the time and effort you put into learning is certainly the main factor.

And of those people who have been hyped as naturally talented musical geniuses, I'm sure not one of them got there without dedicating their lives to music first.

That is the innate thing I was talking about, Bouncy. The passion to *become* your own passion does end up meaning you do little else but that, so of course you should get better and better at it.

But without the whatever you want to call it - the passion, the gift, the supreme desire - you just end up being technically proficient rather than amazingly talented.

<>

Chicken or egg dilemma, I think. It seems, as I said before, that these people are simply becoming *more* of what they already are. Which is why they dedicate themselves - to themselves.


az

<<>

And what does time spent in practice correlate with? (az mentioned the *desire* to be a musician.)>

It's so tempting to answer 'musical ability', but instead let's ask what 'the desire to be a musician' correlates with.

In the linked paper, Sloboda suggests that it is good relationships with motivating parents and teachers etc.

If we assume, as seems reasonable, that these things are set up in the first decade of life - then Pinker's assertion seems shaky. We've all heard of small boys wanting to be engine drivers. It is rarely what they end up going for when they reach maturity! What a waste of all that chugging round the edges of the room!

On a completely different topic: I have decided that the tripartite analysis of knowledge is wrong and that the Gettier counterexamples are merely symptomatic of the underlying error. Somewhat controversially, I've decided that knowledge doesn't require belief. I don't know whether this is original or whether anyone here can figure out my reasoning to reach this conclusion. More later.

toxx

Hey, Bouncy. I think Berry was referring to the Modern Jazz Quartet style - bop, 'cool school' as opposed to, say, Dixieland jazz. In other words 'modern jazz' as a style among many others, rather than a remark about jazz as a whole.

toxx

We used to sing it in school assemblies, but then when I "did" Blake in university, I learned that Blake's intent was to criticise the industrialism of his time. (Jerusalem, that is.)

'Being great at anything requires both inspiration and perspiration.'

Absolutely, interesting although musical ability can be directly related to amount of time spent practicing, it can also be directly related to mathematical ability, I don't at the moment have concrete evidence for this only anecdotal, but most of the musicians I know have pretty good maths skills (Unless of course you put a £ or a $ into the equation then it all seems to go to pot{Woops Just realised there might be a pun there}) This comes down to the nature/nurture debate which of course is irresolvable, but most of the great 'genius's' have not only put in a lot of practice to hone whatever natural talent they possess, but they have also ben pretty good self publicists too, Beethoven being a prime example, among many others.

I am reassured by the following

'On a completely different topic: I have decided that the tripartite analysis of knowledge is wrong and that the Gettier counterexamples are merely symptomatic of the underlying error. Somewhat controversially, I've decided that knowledge doesn't require belief. I don't know whether this is original or whether anyone here can figure out my reasoning to reach this conclusion. More later.'

I am glad to see that I am not the only one that can generate a philisophical question so convoluted I need to read it three times to make sure I have undrstood it.

I would be interested in which three perspectives represent the tripartite analysis of knowledge, for myself I can come up with the personal, the social, the linguistic, the philosophical the emotive ect ect ...

The assertion that knowledge doesn't require belief interests me though I dont think I could reconstruct the logical paper trail which could lead to that assumption (That last word gives away my perspective doesn't it .... Damn!) I'm afraid I have to resort to Witgenstein 'cogito ergo et sum' for everything else I must use deduction and logic which suggests there is an external reality, but doesn't prove there is one, since my point of view influences the way that external reality appears. Hence I am forced to resort to faith that I don't live in my own, deluded, fantasy and that there is a real world out there, hence belief, all the knowledge I aquire derives from my percieved experience of that external reality and therefore rests on my faith in it's existance, therefore belief is from my point of view the lynchpin of knowledge.

The logic you refer to may rest on a similar assumption of cogito ergo et sum but may deny any relevance to the percieved external reality.

I believe you may have reasoned as follows: Since I can only percieve what my senses show me, that is the only reality which has substance for me, therefore what I percieve represents a concrete truth, and my awareness of this means my knowledge is of my experience which is as it is and requires no belief. (Presented with the proviso that it is a speculation)

My main difficulty with this point of view is that organising expereience into a logical stream seems to me to be problematic since expereinces can contradict each other. I base this reasoning in this instance on the two perspectives I have outlined, from my point of view both appear logically consistant in isolation, however when compared to each other they contradict and it seems only one can be true. Since the first perspective presented holds the possibility that the second could be percieved as true, whilst second uses a logical framework which supports its own position and no other, the first perspective seems to me to accommodate the logical position of the other and becomes the 'containing' truth for the conundrum.

morning all bye for now,cant comment 2mins left on time

Hey, I actually understood that posting, logicus!

Where have you been lately?


az

Musical Ability

I struggled with the linked paper in some respects although I recognised the sense it made.

My main difficulty is that in any field 'genius' does not tend to represent one ability alone. Truly gifted individuals tend to have clusters of skills, knowledge, apptitude and attributes which lift them above the norm.

List may be a useful example, he writes a nice piece of music, he clearly spent hours practicing, he was admired as a performer, he was fair self publicist, and he had the most enormous hands, (Many pianists claim some of his pieces are next to impossible to play without a span approaching 10 inches, i'm six foot two and my span is only just 9{not that I am a pianist})

It was this cluster of attributes that lifted him above the norm.

As for parental support this may be helpful but not necissarily so, particularly for some of the attributes.

Mozart is my next example, although he was clearly pushed hard by his father to develop the technical skills, in my opinion (and I know many will disagree with me), although he was a court musician and enjoyed considerable success it was only when he confronted conflict that he became a good musician. His court music is just that, i.e. mildly interesting background music, technically good but boring. His major conflict in life seemed to have been with his father and in my opinion his requiem for his father is by far the best thing he ever wrote. My argument being that his life experience was just as influntial as all the other factors.

Personaly Mozart is not a favourite of mine, I much prefer Beethoven Wagner or Hendrix among others, but similar themes can be seen in the lives of many great musicians (Not to mention poets, artists and the like) desire to be great as well as practice, inate ability, and other attributes come together and could be regarded as gifts of fate or if your monotheistic, god

hey, i just saw the bit about musical ability being linked to mathematical ability. personally, i dont think that thats true for me, it might be for other people but i'm currently studying for 2 grade 8's ( which is going ok but it is a matter of having the *passion* and whatever to sit down and play all the scales )and i've just done my gcse maths and it went terribly. but then i don't know what dictates mathematical ability or what it depends on. i dont really like maths..(understatement) but maybe that's because of a particular teacher whose company i had the *pleasure* of for the last 4 or so years. nice.

Well, Stron. I'm pretty sure that Noggin covered this a few pages back, but the triparte analysis is that knowledge is "justified, true belief". I don't think anyone has ever attacked 'true', but 'justified' had taken a helluva battering one way and another.

I have suggested that 'belief', although it might well be involved in most cases, is not necessary for knowledge. I would like to leave it as a bit of a conundrum for a while in case someone either figures out my reasoning or comes up with a refutation - a demonstration that belief IS a necessary condition for knowledge.

toxx

I would say you have to acquire the knowledge/information somehow, and this is where belief comes in. How do you know you got it from a reliable source? Well you acquired that knowledge from another source. And eventually it probably comes down to the sources in your mind you trusted instincively before you ever thought about all this silly intellectualisation stuff .

Perhaps it just comes down to work games?

Mmm, I do believe that this topic has indeed been mentioned recently, and that Wittgenstein's unfinished notes "On Certainty", in which he wrestles with this very problem were referred to.

The problem is essentially that the terms of analysis can't be separated one from the other. Both individually and collectively the justification for most items of putative belief/knowledge is reference to other items of putative belief/knowledge.

Belief could possibly be thought of as information that is insufficiently connected to the matrix, or in the case of belief-systems as organisational principles that may have nothing that corresponds to a truth value.

Noggin

Hi Toxxin

There are too many posts to read between my last burst of activity on this thread and this burst of activity, so I appologise for being behind the times.

I suppose it is beholden on me to buck the trend and have a go at truth for a moment: I have a problem with truth as there seems to be a limited number of things which can be said to be true, I see I hear I breathe but these can be encapsulated in two overarching concepts, I experience and I remember. I can't be 100% certain what I experience is true, only that it is true that I experience it, the same is true for memory, I cannot be certain that what I remember is true, only that it is true that I remember it. Obviously then the tripartite analysis must logicaly use justification and belief to extend this beyond this rather limited perspective to lift Knowledge to an abstraction. I.e. if I have experienced event 'X' (truth) and believe it is similar to other experiences and memories I have (Other truths) then this similarity Justifies me to describe my experiences and beliefs as Knowledge.

My difficulty would be that the justification may be flawed and I have no (Guaranteed) external viewpoint to check the assumptions of the justification, nor indeed the assumptions informing the belief.

Therefore I need neither Justification nor belief to accumulate knowledge, only truth, derived from experience.

i.e. As I watch a sunrise, I remember The sun always rising in the morning, I imagine that it will rise tomorrow but I cannot Know the sun will rise tomorrow morning because I have not experienced that moment Yet.

Re reading that it sounds suspiciously Like Lau Tsu or Kunk Fu Tse.

This all suggests that Knowledge is an illusion and that all there really is is experience.

Hi Della

Trying to get back on the main theme shall we have at this one again old kiwi?

The Christian illusion of free will is at the heart of your argument. I would counter that as He created every aspect of us and this world, and he created the devil (note your texts say only humans had free will thus we must assume the choirs of angels have none, therefore Satan is acting under orders), and sin (there is no alternative if he is triple-O), the mess falls squarely at his feet. QED.

From the inerrant history of His works His only response to the mess in the past has been genocide.

Before you start down the path of saying your lord Jesus now mediates between God and His creation in line with the New Covenant, consider this. God is Jesus, and vice versa, making him schizophrenic as well .

OK the pot is stirred, I shall crawl off to bed and look in on this tomorrow.

Bright blessings of Holly King!
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

>>Drone, Jez?
Have you been to a church lately?<<

Yes. And a Mosque, and a Hindu wedding, and a Sikh festival, and a Bhuddist meditation centre, and a Druid circle, and a Wiccan handfasting, and a Jewish Sabbath, and a Heathen Winternights, and Yule, and Mothers' Night, and Hrethablot, and Winter Solstice at Stonehenge, Summer Solstice at Avebury, Eostremonath egg-rolling, and a Spiritualist Church Open Circle, and a heathen path-working/seidh where I acted as Gald-singer/scope (shaper-singer)... Believe it or not, I even have Christian godchildren, because my Christian friends respect my ethical and moral stance. And pagan goddess-children.

I am at present practising some Victorian Christian music for an Arts evening, along with a Lennon/McCarthy medley, while writing a piece for WInternights based on a rather nice Medieval lullaby. I run a site for pagan songwriters and poets.

I am also a member of the local Guild of Church Bell Ringers, which involves me attending many different churches over the country

Have you been to a pagan celebration ever? What exactly is your own experience of religious music beyond Christianity?

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Hey, the gods and music, my favourite combination.

I really ought to sing you

'Be you ware of him!' which is a paen to Loki, or the Invocation of Hertha

Jez

Jez gets around!

Which is probably why I have been missing you so much lately - you're never here!

kisses,
az

Yes, indeed, sane rain meanders on, the maths teacher you have can (it did in my case) make all the difference!

<>

Well done, Matholwch! You knew exactly what I would say...though I wouldn't quite put it that way. The "genocide" you refer to is all in the Old Testament. I have little time for that, and have to admit to being somewhat heretical in that...
Jesus does exactly as you say, and mediates between God and us, and Yes, God and Jesus are one. God chose to send a part of Godself as Jesus, because God wanted humans to know God, and God wanted to experience being human. Development, not schizophrenia!

Two words, Jez. Sydney Carter! (Judging by what you said, you should know of him.)
Also, Evanescence (tho' I am not sure you'd like them, their music is a bit young) Jars of Clay, Creed,POD and in NZ Brooke Fraser.

What is my experience of religious music outside Christianity? More extensive than you might think!