Work and Workings of a Nerd

During marching season in high school, band practice dictated how I dressed. On practice-free days, I could wear anything, but when we had after-school rehearsal, I always wore one of our white band t-shirts. The shirts were absolutely plain other than a small logo on the right chest, but that logo meant a lot to me. That logo branded me as a member of the JET Band, and I was proud to wear one every time I marched. With all of my sister’s old band shirts, I was ready from the outset to have a band shirt for every day I needed one.

Because there were a lot of days. In a given week, we might have 3 rehearsals, 1 football game, and 1 competition, and because every practice and performance tested the saturation of my cotton shirts, each day required a fresh shirt. By my senior year, however, I had sufficiently worn and stained several shirts out of use, leaving me in a potential shortage for long weeks. I needed more shirts. I needed to act.

A tradition in my high school band program is “Money Day.” Held after-school on the first day of classes, students try various sizes of marching shoes, specify their meal plans, and pick up equipment for the rest of marching season, including band shirts. Duties as a senior meant I didn’t get equipment until the end, when all of the medium shirts were gone. I wouldn’t wear anything except one of those medium band shirts in shortage, so I just wrote my name down on a list to receive one when more shirts arrived. Things were not going according to plan: instead of multiple shirts, I had none.

Several hours later, we were cleaning up the band hall from the chaos of “Money Day” when we came across an unopened box. My band director used his keys to open it, cutting the tape to discover the treasure within: the missing medium band t-shirts. With an abundance of fresh, shining shirts before me, I eagerly grabbed one out of the cardboard box, satisfied that I had something to show for “Money Day.” In my glee, I foolishly missed the opportunity to take more, a mistake that might haunt me if not for more luck.

The following day, I was rehearsing in class when I saw our drum majors passing out band shirts. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but the greatest gifts come when we aren’t looking. Now, I can’t remember whether I had a chance to intercede or not, but before I knew it, I had another shirt. Maybe I was standing and playing when the drum major came and dropped the shirt off on my seat, or maybe I accepted it sitting down, with thanks and a mischievous grin. In any case, I resolved my confusion when I remembered that I had never indicated to anyone that I had eventually received a shirt the day before: they still thought I was one of those poor, shirtless students on that list.

That made me question whether I actually knew who “they” were. I knew I had stolen from someone; I had only paid for one shirt. Through the rest of class, I argued with myself about what to do. I could give it to my band director, but he had better things to worry about than a band shirt. I could give it back to the drum major, though she would probably care even less. As I went down the list of potential contacts, I gradually realized that my mistakenly received shirt mattered to no one except me. To me, that shirt represented one day a week where I wouldn’t have to wear a shirt with a hole in the armpit, or a pizza stain down the front. And as soon as I determined that there was no victim in my crime, the shirt truly became mine.

I still wear both shirts to this day. Other than that logo, they’re plain white shirts I can wear under button-downs. Whenever I pull one out of my wardrobe, it reminds me of my pride for high school band, a pride I wear with me everywhere. And whenever I see them next to each other as I fold my laundry, they remind me of my pride for my loot, the band shirt that found its way to me.

Here’s something I wrote for my creative non-fiction class. The assignment was to write a 700 word portrait of someone, keeping sensory details in mind. This is my first run at it. I got some good feedback today in class, so there might be a revision.

“You want any diet soda? I have a ton in my fridge,” he says with one in hand. More cans spill out of the recycling bin in the corner, and when he leans over from his desk to pop open the fridge, you see just as many chilling.

“He’s not joking,” someone adds from the couch on your left. “If you don’t drink them, he will. And you should probably have some Cheez-Its as well.” Tom smiles at the comment from the crowd and points to a 3 pound box of Cheez-Its under his desk. As your gaze shifts from the fridge to the box, you notice the other items scattered around the room, in a messy, but inviting, manner. You almost feel at home in the very natural disorder. You accept a diet soda with thanks as you sit down on the couch.

Taking a closer look at the room, a lot of the possessions seem like junk. Magic cards are scattered in various boxes and piles on desks and across the floor, and the N64 controllers form a tangled braid of cords. A desktop computer dominates Tom’s desk, with a few scraps of notebook paper wedged underneath. The shot glasses on the dresser have something dried into the bottom. They’re likely remains from the same event as the couple beer cans mixed into the diet soda cans in recycling.

“Kevin put those up,” he says when you compliment him on the maps and “Where’s Waldo” posters on the wall. You dismiss the thought when you realize what isn’t there: a lot. You don’t see any kleenex or decorative trinkets. There isn’t even a bookshelf. You don’t see any other food than the Cheez-Its, though everything from the couch you’re on to the unpaired flip flop looks like it has seen heavy use. It reminds you of that Steven Pinker book on your shelf that you’ve been meaning to read but haven’t touched since putting it there. And that picture of you with your ex in that collage over your bed: why is that still there? In fact, you think back to when your parents packed you for college, getting a thousand little items, each for a specific purpose. There’s that Rubik’s cube in your desk when you get bored of writing and want a stimulating, abstract challenge, and the cough medicine in case you get a cold. From the looks of this room, Tom is equipped to ward off swine flu with absurd amounts of diet pepsi and to only relax by playing the same video game.

As you grab a handful of Cheez-Its out of the box in Tom’s outstretched hand, you notice that he’s also playing one of your favorite rock songs. You’re about to hum along a couple bars when you realize that no one else pays the music any attention. The speakers sound great, though, and when the music turns to a hit 90s pop song, you want to let him know how much you love it. Your mouth closes as quickly as it opens when you see that no one in the room cares what they’re listening to.

Tom takes the last drink out of his can, tosses it onto the recycling heap. Before you can get up to fix the recycling heap that toppled with the newest addition, Tom grabs another soda from the fridge. He, in a practiced gesture, cracks it open and sits down again, picking up with this can where he left off with the last one.

“Living in Tom’s room is something of a lifestyle,” Kevin says from the other side of the couch as you talk about the room. A few games of “Super Smash Brothers” and a few hours later, you leave and only then realize how odd that statement is, seeing as the door said that Kevin is the other occupant of the room. And when you left unceremoniously, you sensed that you’re not the first or the last visitor to receive this brand of Tom’s hospitality. In fact, the unceremonious nature of everything in that room is what made it such a great visit. The diet soda, the Cheez-Its, the music, the otherwise barren appearance are just as much residents as any person in that room; they’re all constants of the only lifestyle they’ll ever need.

This evening, I went to the Coho to listen to the jam session. Leland, a friend of mine, mentioned that his combo would be hosting, and it seemed like a good opportunity to both support him and get an assignment done.
The combo included a trumpet, alto sax, tenor sax, bass, piano, and drums, so they fit the typical small ensemble. Looking at them, most were familiar from either the Stanford Latin Jazz Ensemble or Jazz Orchestra, so I was fairly sure that this would be a good group to listen to. Even without knowing that they were a combo, it was apparent that they were more familiar with each other. As they began their performance, they went through the intro for quite awhile. They played off each other, but after a couple minutes, they suddenly went into the head of their first song.
The first tune was “Blue Bossa,” played relatively slowly and was easy to listen to. The first soloist on tenor sax played a relatively consonant solo that stayed very close to the melody. What impressed me, though, was that he managed to play it without sounding overly smooth and losing my interest. Each of the horns went through their solos, and through each, the rhythm section started out quiet and progressively got louder and louder. This sort of movement helped to carry each of the soloists through. When the piano began his solo, I was impressed by the bass who immediately filled in as the pianist’s left hand. By listening to the bass, I could follow the chord changes while listening entirely to the piano in his solo. Going into the ending, it was again very apparent that the players were familiar with each other. I remembered a particularly bad ending by the performers the last time I was here at the Coho: each had a phrase he wanted to end on, yet when they all played together, they went through a series of false endings and confusion. This time, however, the players managed to stay together, trading phrases back and forth until the piano finished it.
The next piece was somewhat more upbeat. The head was a call-and-response between the trumpet and saxes. Although I can’t recall the name of the piece right now, the head sounded familiar as something out of the hard bop style. I was even more impressed as the piano filled in the gaps for the trumpet during his solo, more proof of the familiarity between the players.
The third piece, “Freddie Freeloader,” continued in the same hard bop style. Perhaps the best tip came from a surprise scat solo from the alto sax player, who then rattled off a couple very soulful verses. Barring the setting, I might’ve mistaken the performance as a part of an R&B recording. The bassist continued the feel, beginning in the lower range for a richer, warmer sound before moving onto the rest of a more creative solo.
The last piece I listened to was “Oleo”, a bebop piece with the three horns playing the first part of the head in unison with the piano on the rest. The piano took the first solo, blowing through a series of chord changes underneath the main line. Proving his range of playing styles, the tenor sax played through his solo, running up and down scales and playing in the upper range of his instrument, contrasting his first solo earlier this evening. The piece ended playfully as the piano and saxes went back and forth with the drums, playing 8 beats of whatever came to mind first. And in typical bebop fashion, the piece ended suddenly after repeating the head.

Final version of that Phil paper. I think it’s a lot cleaner than the last version, so I’m satisfied with how it turned out.

Intuitions about Intensions

In “Meaning and Reference,” Hilary Putnam challenges the theory that meaning is just a set of properties that picks out certain objects. He believes that psychological states don’t exactly determine the referenced objects. To show this, he first separates this theory, known as the verifiability theory of meaning, into two parts: 1) psychological states determine the meanings, or intensions, of words, and 2) the intensions determine the referenced objects, or extensions, and then proves that these parts aren’t jointly satisfiable. Although he maintains that intensions determine extensions, Putnam only gives a short argument in a footnote for why he believes this. I will first analyze what Putnam does say on whether intensions determine extensions, then give a counter-example to show why his argument isn’t compelling.

First, consider how Putnam uses intensions in his argument to show that psychological states don’t determine extension. Putnam doesn’t explicitly define intension, only saying that knowing a word’s intension is to understand the word. I will interpret Putnam to denote meaning when he says intension, and reference when he says extension. Putnam first assumes that intensions determine extensions in the Twin Earth example. As mentioned, he separates the belief that psychological state determines extension into two parts, with intension as the bridge. To prove this theory wrong, he must show that exactly one part is true, and exactly one part is false. If both are true, then the theory holds, which is not what he wants. If both are false, then the decomposition is meaningless because we haven’t established any causation from psychological states to extensions through intensions. He attacks the claim that psychological states determine intensions with the H2O-XYZ thought experiment and socio-linguistic division of labor. Since exactly one must be false and Putnam shows that “psychological states determine intensions” is false, then he must believe that “intensions determine extensions” is true.

Later in his discussion of indexicality, Putnam gives more evidence that he believes intensions determine extensions. He points out that natural-kind words have an implicit indexicality. Put differently, words grouped by natural, not artificial qualities also depend on the frame of reference of the speaker. For example, when we say “water,” we’re referring to everything that appears to be watery in our local environment. Depending on the universe, that “water” might be H2O or XYZ, so Putnam claims that “words have intensions” and “intensions determine extensions” cannot both be true. If they are both true, all instances of the word “water” should refer to H2O, regardless of the universe. To avoid this conflict, one must deny one of the two claims. Notably, Putnam rejects that words have intensions and says, “as we have chosen to do, that difference in extension is ipso facto a difference in meaning for natural-kind words,” to maintain his belief that intensions determine extensions (710).

Given how much the essay depends on it, Putnam surprisingly only presents a footnote for why he believes intensions determine extensions. In it, he appeals to our intuition about how words work with the following argument by contradiction. Assume intensions don’t determine extensions. Thus, two words could possibly have the same intension but different extensions. When one person on our Earth says “water” (referring to H2O) and one person on Twin Earth says “water” (referring to XYZ), they have the same meaning. We can imagine that on Twin Earth, language might have developed slightly differently, such that “water” is pronounced “quaxel.” The two words, by assumption, still have the same intension even though they are pronounced differently and pick out different objects. This intuitively is a contradiction because they seem to have different meanings, though the intensions are the same. Therefore, our assumption that intension doesn’t determine extension is false, so intensions determine extensions.

Although I share this intuition, I remain unconvinced by this argument because it takes advantage of our pre-conceived notions about water from the Twin Earth argument. Instead, I will show that Putnam’s argument isn’t universally valid. To see this, consider how Putnam believes we arrive at our psychological states and intensions. Putnam distinguishes between the operational definition and actual definition for an object. The operational definition is a standard for how we understand the nature of an object without actually determining its essential qualities. For example, an operational test for water would be a series of tests that could yield superficial properties though not guarantee certainty about the microstructure of something that might be water.

A drawback to this interpretation is that he bases the difference on an empirically determined definition for the microstructure of water. He says, “Once we have discovered that water (in the actual world) is H2O, nothing counts as a possible world in which water isn’t H2O” (710). Unfortunately, even water’s microstructure, which is Putnam’s actual definition, is based upon possibly faulty experiments, and history has shown that we will likely discover a deeper scientific quality that will allow us to make finer distinctions in the future. In 1750, one might argue that all liquids with a certain taste are water, and its transparency under a microscope was the true structure and actual definition of water. And in another 100 years, we may determine that some other characteristic could change our definition of water again. Imagine that we discover H2O can exist in non-water states as rocks on a distant planet. If we don’t accept that H2O rocks are water, then our definition is wrong. If we do accept that H2O rocks are water, then the extension of water doesn’t quite match up with what we typically intend when we say “water.” This doesn’t show that intensions don’t determine extensions, but I will exploit this counter-intuitive notion later in my argument.

With that, let’s revisit Putnam’s original argument. We can break down the difference between our water and Twin Earth water, “quaxel,” that makes Putnam’s answer so intuitive. By assumption, the intensions agree. The extensions are different because we know that one is H2O and the other is XYZ. And the pronunciation is different. Intuitively, “water” and “quaxel” can’t mean the same thing, which is the contradictory result.

So consider a different example where we again assume that intensions don’t determine extensions. We know the actual definition of oxygen based on its microstructure. We know it has 8 protons in its microstructure, commonly binds in pairs to form oxygen molecules, and is necessary for breathing. Now on Twin Earth, they also have oxygen. If we were to send our scientists there, they would agree that their air also contains oxygen. Thus, “oxygen” on both planets seems to have the same psychological state, intension, and extension. We can extend this slightly: on Twin Earth, their English sounds different, so their “yorpit” is our “oxygen.” The intension and extension are the same, and the pronunciation difference isn’t important. This result should be intuitive and unsurprising.

Now, remember the difficulty above regarding rock water. Imagine that time travelers from the future come to visit us today, and in their time, they have discovered sub-magnetic fields to make finer distinctions between elements. They discover that there are actually two types of oxygen. In Earth oxygen, a sub-magnetic field appears within its electrons but doesn’t in Twin Earth oxygen. In fact, these time travelers laugh that we call these two substances both oxygen because it’s obvious to them that they only share superficial qualities like their microstructure. To reiterate, though, both types of oxygen behave in exactly the same ways: we can breathe and fuel fire with both of them. Only because the time travelers have discovered faster-than-light methods of transportation did they notice the difference.

With this new information example, we must accept the scientific truth from the time travelers. Because of this new distinction, we now have the same breakdown as between “water” and “quaxel.” They have the same intension, but different extensions and pronunciation. In this case, it isn’t obvious that “oxygen” and “yorpit” have different meanings. Because of my social and scientific context, I don’t care about sub-magnetic fields; that has nothing to do with my meaning when I say “oxygen.” And even though “yorpit” and “oxygen” are different words, and the time traveler asserts to me that these two are fundamentally different, I still don’t believe my meaning has changed. If we analyze the difference with the “water” and “quaxel” example, we see that the controversy doesn’t come the belief that intensions don’t determine extensions; that’s consistently assumed in both cases. It’s a different pre-supposed intuition that creates different conclusions. Instead of showing that “intensions determine extensions” is necessary, these examples only prove that our intuitions about words affect its meaning.

This thought experiment doesn’t explicitly prove that intension doesn’t determine extension. Depending on how we define intension and meaning, I might still believe that intensions determine extensions. However, I don’t believe that Putnam’s appeal to our intuition is necessarily strong enough to prove this because of the limited perspective of our intuitions.

Works Cited
Putnam, Hilary. “Meaning and Reference.” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 70, No. 19, Seventieth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Nov. 8, 1973), pp. 699-711. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025079

Earlier this evening, I made the trip across campus to listen to the Stanford Jazz Orchestra perform with guest artist Jon Faddis. Having heard him play two days before in class, I already knew that he could play just like Dizzy, but I was anxious to hear him play in an ensemble.
The first piece, “Manteca,” was straight out of Dizzy’s songbook, and I honestly could’ve closed my eyes and seen Dizzy standing there playing the exact same thing. The same high trumpet passages came just as rapidly as in the recording, and the larger orchestra balanced it well by keeping up and being just as bright. The piano solo provided a good contrast to the trumpet solo and managed to fit in quite well.
One aspect that surprised me in the performance was the amount of communication going on on-stage. Perhaps it’s part of Jon’s personality, but the transitions between solos and direction were more than I expected. That sort of impromptu judgment seems more situated in smaller combo setting than larger sets. Seeing as improvisation is an important part to jazz, however, it makes sense that even that doesn’t change based on the size of the ensemble.
The performance of “‘Round Midnight” was just as fun as I was hoping. Having listened to several different recordings of it from Monk himself, Miles Davis, and the Bill Holman Band, I was familiar with the number of interpretations and arrangements of the piece. Unlike some songs that have a definitive recording, I knew I was going to hear something new, and I enjoyed it. The alto sax against trombone sounded great, and the rest of the orchestra blended very well. The solos seemed to mostly match the melody closely, which still sounded great. Instead of playing off the chords, the soloists seemed to be playing around with the melody.
The last song before going into Jon’s songs was “A Night in Tunisia,” another classic Dizzy piece. There was some instability in the beginning as the tempo might have started slightly too quickly, but the rhythm section quickly regrouped and provided a solid beat for the rest of it. I thought the choice of trombone over trumpet on the head was great, though I imagine it’s significantly more difficult to get through the technique on trombone. Leland’s bass solo was great, and Bill Bell fit into the ensemble immediately. Being a song I’ve heard many times, I was looking forward to something good, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The rest of the pieces written by Jon seemed to covered a wide range of genres while still having that same feel. While “Waltz for My Father and Brothers” sounded like something Frank Sinatra might sing, “Hunters and Gatherers” sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. The arrangements all had great balance between the soloist and the orchestra. Being less familiar with these pieces, I can’t compare them as well to other recordings or pieces.
The last piece before the encore, “Teranga,” was the most notable to me. More obviously than any of the others, this song had a foreign influence, and having the percussionist basically made it possible. Although I’ve never heard flute and trumpet in unison on a solo, the two distinct timbres of the brighter trumpet and more lyrical flute provided great contrast. And to cap it off, we even got a surprise solo from the director. Finishing on that, I thought the encore was the right choice as I wanted to hear more, and having the trumpets featured on “Intimacy of the Blues” fitted perfectly.

Here’s my first draft of a paper on Hilary Putnam’s “Meaning and Reference.” Alexi, the lecturer, stressed that we need to write clearly so that even an elementary student can understand it. While i hope that my audience is more mature than I am, I would still appreciate any feedback that anyone has on the paper.

Draft 1 for Paper 2

In “Meaning and Reference,” Hilary Putnam challenges the traditional view that meaning is a set of properties. He wants to show that one’s psychological state doesn’t determine exactly what objects in the world are being picked out. To do this, he breaks this claim into two parts: one, psychological state determines the meaning, or intension, of a term, and two, the intension determines the satisfying objects, or extension, and shows that these parts aren’t jointly satisfiable. Although he maintains that intension determines extension, Putnam only gives a short argument in a footnote for why. I will first analyze what Putnam does say on whether intension determines extension, then explain why his argument is not compelling.

In this paper, Putnam doesn’t explicitly define intension and only comes closest when he says that knowing a word’s intension is “understanding a word” (700). Fortunately, this definition will be sufficient in our discussion of Putnam as it is enough to say that the intuition that intension determines extension is the same as the intuition that the meaning of a word determines what the words refer to. We can find evidence that Putnam does believe that intension determines extension in the Twin Earth example. As mentioned, he separates the belief that psychological state determines extension into two parts, with intension as the bridge. To prove this theory wrong, he must show that exactly one part is true, and exactly one part is false. If both are true, then the theory hold, and if both are false, then the decomposition is meaningless. He chooses to mainly attack the idea that psychological state determines intension and uses the H2O-XYZ thought experiment and socio-linguistic division of labor to explain why. We can assume that Putnam’s argument is well-formed so intension determines extension is correct and psychological state determines intension is wrong.

In his discussion of indexicality, Putnam gives more evidence that he believes intension determines extension. He points out that natural-kind words (words that are grouped by natural, not artificial qualities) have an implicit indexicality, meaning that those words also depend on the frame of reference of the speaker. For example, when we say “water,” we’re referring to everything that appears to be watery in our local environment. Depending on the universe, that water might be H2O or XYZ, so the claims that words have intensions and intension determines extension cannot both be true. If so, all instances of the word “water” should refer to H2O, regardless of the universe. We can deny either of these two claims to resolve this conflict. Notably, Putnam rejects that words have intensions and says, “as we have chosen to do, that difference in extension is ipso facto a difference in meaning for natural-kind words,” to maintain his belief that intension determines extension (710).

Putnam does present a short argument for why he believes intension determines extension in a footnote to the indexicality discussion. He appeals to our intuition about how words work with the following example: assume intension didn’t determine extension. Thus, when one person in our universe said water (referring to H2O) and one person in another universe said water (referring to xyz), they had the same meaning. We can imagine that in this parallel universe, language might have developed slightly differently, such that “water” is pronounced “quaxel.” Now, two words apparently have the same intension even though they are pronounced differently and pick out different things. And our intuition is that this is a contradiction because they can’t have the same meaning.

Although I share this intuition, I remain unconvinced by this argument because it takes advantage of our pre-conceived notions about water from the Twin Earth argument. Instead, I will show that Putnam’s argument isn’t valid in other examples. To see this, we must first consider how Putnam believes we arrive at our psychological states and intensions. Putnam explains the difference between the operational definition and actual definition for an object. The operational definition is a standard for how we understand the nature of an object without getting at what he considers its essential qualities. For example, an operational test for water would be a series of tests that could yield superficial properties though not guarantee certainty about the microstructure of something that might be water.

The most apparent drawback to this interpretation is that he bases the difference on an empirically determined definition for the microstructure of water. He says, “Once we have discovered that water (in the actual world) is H2O, nothing counts as a possible world in which water isn’t H2O” (710). Yet even this definition for water based on its microstructure is based upon possibly faulty experiments, and history has shown that we should likely discover a deeper scientific quality that should allow us to make finer distinctions in the future. Several hundreds years ago, one might have made a compelling argument that all things which are clear with a certain taste are water, and the apparent color under a microscope indicated the true nature of what water is. And in another 100 years, we may determine that some quality to hydrogen within water does or doesn’t make it water. If we discovered that H2O could also exist in non-water states as, say, rocks on a distant planet, we must clearly adjust what we intend when we refer to water. A potential counter-argument is that this is the indexicality that Putnam explains in his essay. I, however, feel that that argument trivializes all intension and extension because it is beyond human understanding. The consequence is that we have never and will never actually know the true extension of anything. Because we might learn something more in the future, we can’t even assure that natural-kind groupings don’t have more partitions within.

With that, we can revisit Putnam’s original argument. We can break down the difference between our “water” and Twin Earth water, “quaxel” that make the answer so intuitive. By assumption, the intensions agree because the two terms mean the same thing. The extensions are different because we know that one is H2O and the other is XYZ. And the pronunciation is different. Intuitively, I would also say that “water” and “quaxel” can’t mean the same thing.

So let’s consider a different example. We know what oxygen is. We know we can breathe it, and that it has a specific number of protons in its microstructure and commonly binds with one other oxygen atom to form an oxygen molecule. Now, let’s imagine that there’s a Twin Earth out there where they also have oxygen. If we were to send our scientists there, they would agree that everything there is oxygen. Thus, it would seem that we have the same psychological state, intension, and extension. The only difference is that on Twin Earth, their English sounds different, though each word still corresponds to one of our English words. When they say “yorpit,” they are referring to our “oxygen,” and we should believe that they mean the same thing. The intension and extension are the same, and the pronunciation difference isn’t important.
Now, remember the argument above that extensions are uncertain because they are only known through empirical study. Imagine that time travelers from the future come to visit us today, and in their time, they have discovered new and wonderful properties about elements that allow them to make finer distinctions. They discover that there are actually two types of oxygen, where in Earth oxygen, an sub-magnetic field appears within its electrons yet it doesn’t in Twin Earth oxygen. In fact, these researchers laugh that we call these two substances both oxygen because it’s obvious to them that they only share superficial qualities like their microstructure. To reiterate, though, both oxygen and yorpit behave in exactly the same ways that we can breathe it, use it to fuel fire, and are released by plants in photosynthesis. Only because the time travelers have discovered faster-than-light methods of transportation did they notice the difference.

With this new information example, we have the same breakdown as with “water” and “quaxel.” They have the same intension, but different extensions and pronunciation. To me, it doesn’t seem so. Because of my social and scientific context, I couldn’t care less about the sub-magnetic field. And even though yorpit and oxygen are different words, and the time traveler asserts to me that these two are fundamentally different, I wouldn’t be willing to buy it. When considering why I have come to two different conclusions for the water and oxygen examples, I don’t think it’s that intension determines extension is guiding my judgment. It’s my intuitive sense about what counts as the same that is really making a difference here. Yet in either case, a more careful analysis about the consequence of the uncertainty of the true nature of something means that I shouldn’t believe anything is the same.

When Putnam points out the socio-linguistic quality of words, I think he makes an interesting point about the relevance behind the social aspect to meaning. While this thought experiment doesn’t prove that intension doesn’t determine extension, I don’t believe that Putnam’s appeal to our intuition is necessarily strong enough because of the limited perspective of our intuitions.
Works Cited
Putnam, Hilary. “Meaning and Reference.” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 70, No. 19, Seventieth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Nov. 8, 1973), pp. 699-711. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025079

Concert Review 3 for the University Latin Jazz Ensembles

Jazz performances tend to be cool, relaxed settings. Unlike orchestral performances, the performers will walk around, talk to and react toe ach other during sets, and occasionally even laugh. Even with the informal feel, the performers usually have an understood feeling of restraint to maintain the focus on the music. I don’t think that was an issue for the San Jose State University Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble and Stanford Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble.
Earlier tonight, I went to Campbell Recital Hall to listen to these two groups perform. Because of the small room, the setting was very intimate and perhaps appropriate for as little as a soloist. The SJSU ensemble, however, brought 24 performers, with at least 18 on stage for each set. I had never been to a Latin jazz performance before, so the instrumentation seemed somewhat odd to me immediately, and my surprise continued when the first piece began with everyone just clapping different rhythms. Once they began playing their instruments, however, I discovered how unsuited the ensemble was for the room. With at least 8 percussionists, there was constantly noise coming, which often drowned out the 5 horns. The first piece, “Intercambio,” was through-composed and did the most to set me up for the style of music I would hear for the rest of the evening. The instrumentation and rhythms were definitely derived from jazz, but the timbre and blend of sounds was distinctly Latin.
Their second piece, “Philadelphia Mambo,” had an aaba form that was fairly easy to follow. Going into the solo sections, the performers reminded me most of a swing feel; it wasn’t complex like bebop or contemplative like cool but actually something familiar and almost danceable. The third piece was a Gershwin tune, “Love Walked In,” with a decent vocalist. The performance really let loose, however, on the fourth piece, “The Big Payback” by James Brown. They brought up a vocalist who did an excellent James Brown impression including gestures and spontaneous sound. At this point, I realized that the various players dancing while playing and smiling and grooving were likely more of the style than disrespectful. While in a different setting, a player snapping his fingers might be the biggest gesture, the ensemble definitely added an entire visual aspect to their playing just to make it more fun. Add in some audience participation, and the experience was just fun.
After two more sets, the Stanford Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble took the stage with only 10 performers. While they also played with a similar style and had the fun aspects thrown in, I was amazed how much they contrasted with the previous group, especially given my unfamiliarity with Latin jazz. Perhaps best put by Leland, SJSU was more Latin jazz while Stanford was more Latin jazz. The first piece was “Un Tipo Como Yo,” a fun piece with a good vocalist. Along with the second piece, “Piesotes,” I realized that this ensemble tended to focus more on the individual soloists instead of just grooving and seeing what happened. In their performance, they made a gesture towards SJSU with a beat-boxing duet, so it was clear that while the Stanford ensemble perhaps took the structure of the pieces more seriously, they were just as willing to have fun playing.
The performance concluded with both ensembles on stage together playing John Coltrane’s “Blue Train.” While absolutely absurd, the performance by more than 30 musicians ended up being just as lively and entertaining as the rest of the concert. A token amount of direction was necessary to avoid chaos, but it was the perfect example of performers on-stage and performing for themselves, just because they enjoyed playing.

I just turned in the first paper for my current philosophy class, “Mind, Matter, and Meaning.” I like to think my philosophy writing style has gotten better, but that might be tempered by my lack of depth on the topic. The paper isn’t very long, but I also didn’t manage to get a lot of content into it.

Do We Understand Physicalism?
When considering consciousness, we often distinguish between the physical aspects of firing neurons and the mental aspects of how being alive actually feels. A further consideration is whether the physical and mental are the same–as physicalists believe–or distinct–as dualists believe. In “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Thomas Nagel claims that “it would be a mistake to conclude that physicalism must be false” and that “physicalism is a position we cannot understand because we do not at present have any conception of how it might be true.” These claims might seem inconsistent, but I will explain how Nagel would resolve them. I will then consider meaning of his second claim and explain why I believe it is false.
Before addressing those topics, I want to clarify two points. First, physicalism, as defined by Nagel, states that “mental states are states of the body; mental events are physical events.” Just as Barack Obama and the current President of the United States are distinct names that correspond to the same object, mental states and physical states correspond to the same phenomena. Second, Nagel is ambiguous about what physicalism he believes we cannot understand. He writes, “we do not at present…”, so he could mean that we cannot understand our current version of physicalism, or that we cannot and will never understand the complete theory that physicalism might one day become. While the latter is an interesting topic, I believe that Nagel intends to say that we don’t actually understand physicalism as it is now. Thus, I will abbreviate his second statement as “we can’t understand physicalism now.”
At first glance, Nagel’s two claims, that physicalism doesn’t have to be false and that we can’t understand physicalism now, don’t make much sense together. Roughly, the criticism is that the two claims are mutually exclusive and cannot be simultaneously true, which is valid if we can show that when one is true, the other must be false. So let’s assume we can’t understand physicalism now. If we can’t understand physicalism now, then we don’t actually know what we mean when we talk about “physicalism.” So physicalism is meaningless. For physicalism to be true, it must accurately explain consciousness, and a meaningless theory can’t explain anything. Thus, if physicalism isn’t meaningful, then it is false. The argument concludes that the claim that we can’t understand physicalism now implies that physicalism is wrong.
Nagel would likely respond that this argument is invalid. The criticism asserts that a theory we cannot understand is meaningless, yet earlier in the essay, Nagel specifically addresses what we as humans can understand. He states, “My realism about the subjective domain in all its forms implies a belief in the existence of facts beyond the reach of human concepts.” There are certain facts about the universe that, because of our limited human point of view, we will never understand. Because our scope is limited, we cannot conclude that topics we don’t understand must be false. Quite the opposite, Nagel argues some of those unknowable topics must be true. Although he presents the argument within the scope of explaining the differences in subjective experience, his assertion applies equally here in the debate about these theories.
Following the same argument as that of the criticism, we can start with the same assumption that we can’t understand physicalism. This only implies that, to us humans, physicalism is meaningless. Aliens, however, may exist to whom physicalism is very meaningful and understandable. We may never understand physicalism as it truly is, but according to Nagel, we should accept that such facts do exist. Because physicalism may not be entirely meaningless, we cannot authoritatively claim that it is false from what we know. Granted, this argument is somewhat weak as it doesn’t necessarily prove that physicalism is true; it only shows that we are uncertain about the truth of physicalism. Fortunately for Nagel, that is his original claim. Because both of his two claims can both be true simultaneously, they are not mutually exclusive. Note that this argument still works even in a stronger interpretation of the first claim, where Nagel suggests that physicalism is consistent with the rest of his essay. In this case, we still cannot undoubtedly know that physicalism is false for the same reasons above.
Having dealt with the apparent inconsistency with these two claims, we can now consider the truth of his second claim, “It would be truer to say that physicalism is a position we cannot understand because we do not at present have any conception of how it might be true.” Without delving into the individual clauses, we can first analyze the structure of this claim. With some rearranging, his statement implies that if we have a conception of how physicalism might be true, then we would then be able to understand it. In his essay, the following paragraphs present a counter-argument to the belief that we can understand physicalism directly with the “mental states are physical states” definition. Instead, I will argue that a conception of how physicalism might be true does not necessarily imply that we can understand it.
The more generalized form of his statement is that if we have a conception of how X might be true, then we would then be able to understand X, where X can be anything. We can prove this statement false with a counter-example where the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. Having shown the existence of a counter-example, we can no longer broaden the claim to all objects, including physicalism. I will use string theory as an example of something that we understand but have no conception of how it could be true.
Under Nagel’s definition, one way that we can understand something is to have a “theoretical framework.” Although he doesn’t specify what is sufficient for a theoretical framework, he uses the theoretical framework to determine whether one thing “is” another. Such a framework can break down a concept into understandable and identifiable parts that can act as a common language between two concepts. For string theory, that theoretical framework is math. String theory was originally based upon math and is popular for the elegance of the numbers. At least as far as string theory requires, I will assume that we understand math. Its current content has been developed through human thought and is not dependent on any experience with the physical world that is more fundamental. In the equations dealing with one-dimensional strings in multi-dimensional space, we can describe a significant portion of phenomenon in consistent way with what we observe. Because we can definitively say whether some other theory is or is not string theory, string theory satisfies Nagel’s conditions for understanding.
Although we understand string theory, we still do not know how it could be true. A fundamental problem with string theory is that we have no way to prove whether it is correct or not. With Newtonian mechanics, we can conduct experiments observable by the human-eye to verify our theories. On a quantum level, physicists have worked with particle accelerators to determine the existence of sub-atomic particles. On a string level, however, we have yet to develop a feasible method to directly test whether such strings exist. Even our visualizations of strings are incomplete and unsubstantiated. Simply, we currently don’t even have a method for how we could determine if string theory is true. Without it, we can’t even begin to consider how it might be true.
Given the example from string theory, we can see that there exists at least one theory that we understand yet have no conception for how it could be true. Admittedly, this notion doesn’t tell us much. It’s a fallacy to believe that we don’t currently understand physicalism on this basis, yet we haven’t proven that we do understand physicalism. Having denied Nagel’s conditions for understanding, we can’t use Nagel’s definition of understanding to determine whether we understand physicalism. Although it is not meant to be definitive, I want to propose a different condition for “understanding” so that we can say that we understand physicalism. I will define “understanding” as the ability to express and discuss an idea in a meaningful, accurate manner. The obvious ambiguity with this definition is what I mean by “meaningful.”
In his essay, Nagel points out that we can have proof for something without actually understanding it. Similarly, he would likely believe that we can discuss some concept without actually understanding what it is. What I think is more important is the meaning in context for how we discuss something. For example, if I was explaining baseball to a newcomer, I could say that I understand baseball because I can explain the rules and contrast them with other games. If I were discussing baseball with a physicist, however, I wouldn’t understand baseball because I don’t know exactly why a curveball curves or how the shape of the ball affects its trajectory. For physicalism, we must ask what the most important context is to judge whether we understand it. Although we might hope to understand it better in the future, we now understand it well enough to contrast with dualism, which, most simply, argues that physical states are not mental states. So with this definition of “understanding,” it seems that we can generally say that we understand physicalism.
With these two claims, that physicalism isn’t wrong and that we can’t understand physicalism now, Nagel avoids taking a hard-line position on the dualism versus physicalism debate. Although his statements may seem contradictory, I think it more likely that Nagel intended his essay to be read more as an observation instead of a defense for any particular view. Even so, his conditions for understanding physicalism are wrong, so perhaps we do understand physicalism in a different sense of understanding.

Works Cited

Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?.” The Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 435-450.

And here’s another. This was just from 2 nights ago at the Stanford Coffee House. They do weekly jam sessions for anyone who wants to show up and play.

Concert Review 2 for a Coho jam session

Tonight, I went to the Coho to listen to the jam session for awhile. As usual, they had a core of a drummer, bassist, and piano to start performing and to ensure that any horns had someone to back them up. I actually hadn’t been to a jam session since the summer, and I was curious whether the regulars were as good as the players in for the summer jazz workshop.
I sat off to the right of the stage, so I couldn’t see or hear the bass player so well, but otherwise, everything sounded fine. The rhythm trio started with “All the Things You Are,” which I have a Dizzy Gillespie recording of. The piano stated the theme, then went into a solo. The playing was mostly consonant, which seemed to sound the best because the song sounds like a vocal piece. It was followed with a bass solo, which I couldn’t hear so well. It sounded good, except when the piano started to lightly comp, I felt like either the pianist or the bassist was lost, but it ended smoothly enough.
On the third song, they introduced a vocalist and trumpet player. Thanks to the words, I determined that the song was “Blue Skies.” The vocalist had a decent jazz voice, but not a particularly good range. Admittedly, I tend to prefer instrumentalists over vocalists, but I also found his solo unimaginative and perhaps too close to the melody to be interesting. I was very pleased with the trumpet player, though, who played an equally lyrical, low, slow solo. Barring the dramatic difference in style, his timbre reminded me of Louie Armstrong, which I can certainly enjoy.
The fourth song started with a piano intro on top of a bossa nova beat from the bass. The same trumpet stayed on to play the head, though the rest of the rhythm section switched out. Until this point, I guess I hadn’t noticed the rhythm section too much, but I could tell the bass and drums weren’t too familiar with each other. While the ensemble managed to stay together fine, I found myself paying attention to the rhythm section for the wrong reasons and was surprised by them at the wrong times. While the bass player did fine staying with the simple bossa nova beat, I’m thinking maybe the drum player wasn’t so comfortable with it.
The fifth piece introduced another sax to a total of the 3 horns. The tenor sax took the lead, and I could immediately tell it was bebop. The theme was relatively simple, and the tenor immediately began his solo. The walking bass behind him helped to keep the tempo moving as the tenor slowed down slightly through the faster licks. The trumpet player managed to surprise me again by playing a blistering solo, so I was suitably impressed by him at this point. The final head was played in unison by the tenor and trumpet, and they had clearly planned some sort of coda. Unfortunately, I think they forgot to inform the pianist, which ended up as a mess of half-endings, trailing sounds, and maybe even shave and a haircut.
I think I was most impressed by how quickly the players matched each other. I’m assuming that on most of the studio albums and other live concerts I’ve heard, the players have had the chance to at least run the tune once before to know what to expect. The interaction was absolutely live, with a lot of eye contact and talking during the set. I’m assuming the songs were mostly standards even if I hadn’t heard them some of them before, but I still enjoyed hearing the clearly fresh sounds of unfamiliar groups of players.

Since migrating onto my own domain, I have decided to combine all 3 of my blogs into a single one split up by categories. The vast majority of my posts are still personal topics, but posts that would’ve once gone to my fiction or nonfiction blog are going to show up here, now. Like this one.

One of the things I’ve been doing in my nonfiction blog is posting essays, reports, and write-ups for the courses I’m taking. Well-aware that most of it is no interest to most people, this at least gives me the comfort that what I do isn’t doomed to an inevitable disk crash or deletion without having ever been available for someone other than my instructor to read.

So here’s one. I’m taking a jazz history class right now, and part of the work is going to a couple jazz performances and writing up one-page reports. This one was written from a performance I went to just over a week ago.

Concert Review 1 for Fly

Last night, I went to Yoshi’s to see Fly perform. They’re jazz trio comprising Mark Turner on tenor and soprano sax, Jeff Ballard on drums, and Larry Grenadier on bass. I had seen them perform this past summer with Joshua Redman here at Stanford, and that time, it was quite beyond me, and I didn’t enjoy it that much. Fortunately, the music didn’t seem as “out there” this time.
The smaller room at Yoshi’s was definitely the right feel for the trio. Most of the songs focused mostly on sax, usually somewhat in conversation with either the bass or the drums. Unlike the bebop songs we’ve been listening to, almost all of the songs were only loosely based around a melody, and usually actually around something else. For example, one song started with a bass intro, which turned into an 8-beat phrase he repeated through the rest of the song. While I could hear the solo fall into the same chords as the phrase from the bass, the sax and drums were largely just playing around that sound. In another, perhaps the only unity I could find was that the sax was soloing around some minor scale that I’m not familiar enough with to identify.
I was impressed by the wide range of the sax player. He sound was clear whether playing through a slow, lyrical part, or a fast run up and down the range. What distinguished his playing from what we’ve been listening to in class was the focus. Charlie Parker was playing around the chords and creating a frantic, constant sound that feels like it’s driving towards something. Mark Turner would also have fast licks up and down a scale, but each of these seemed like a distinct musical thought. Instead of playing straight through each of his solos, he would seem to have an inspiration, play for a couple bars, then stop again. And when he was playing against the bass, I did have a lot of difficulty following the song as there wasn’t a piano comping in the background.
Only one piece had a very clear structure to me. In the second to last song, the sax had an 12-beat riff that he repeated several times at the beginning, end, and in a couple places in-between. Unlike the mostly dissonant sounds so far, I found myself less often surprised through this piece. The performers seemed no more or less comfortable playing in this style than anything else more far out they had played, but as a listener, it was a lot more comforting to return to a form that I could follow. The piece seemed the closest to the bebop music we were listening to: I found the head easily enough, and each of the performers traded the solo around. The tenor solo was the more blistering pace I had heard in class, and with the bass behind it, I could hear parts of the head in what he was playing.
Although each song had some theme, whether a scale, a riff, or a rock beat from the drums, I found myself thinking to try to put the music together. By the end, though, my foot was tapping, and I felt myself enjoying it, even if I didn’t understand all of the music. The style was certainly very modern, and I think I’m just going to need to listen to it to learn to appreciate it. In comparison to when I heard them this past summer, I enjoyed it much more, and I think that’s because I know more about the music. And I’m glad to know that I’ll continue to enjoy the music more and more as I come to understand it better.