Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

Fit the first, poll post:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/666133.html

"You know what to do with your fear of a mask - but how do you begin to approach the bones that hold it up?"

Humans are mostly the only animals who can choose to think about their surroundings using more than one conceptual framework. Most of us do this naturally all the time without consciously mode-switching (and a surprising percentage of people become confused or scared if they become aware of this typically unconscious mode-switching).

And, yes, capri0mni was correct to note that my "when is a boat not a boat" poll is related to the classic argument about the Ship of Theseus because it's a question of the identity of a non-conscious object.

I think there are two possible arguments in play: one about context and human perception; and one about objective versus subjective physicality.

1. Context and human perception

1a. I encountered the boat in the context of a museum where it's presented as an individual boat with a traceable history. But as a museum exhibit it's also representing the idea of a boat and of all the other historic boats that aren't present.

1b. If I'd encountered the boat in the context of an art gallery where it was displayed as conceptual art of a boat, with an explanation of the concept (as is usual in those circumstances) then its primary meaning shifts from "being a boat" to "being a concept of a boat" in whatever way the artist intends (if they're a convincing artist, obv, as I have seen both convincing and unconvincing art, lol).

1c. If I'd encountered the boat as a wreck on the strand next to a fleet of working fishing boats then perhaps it would have been un-boated or at least its boat-ness reduced by comparison ("Is a retired fisherman still a fisherman?" "Yes, he retains all his professional knowledge and personal experience but, no, because he doesn't actually fish."). It also wouldn't have survived long as the weather and people seeking lumber would've unmade it much faster than in a museum where it's actively preserved. So it might have remained a boat briefly but would soon be a pile of lumber and then only the memory of a pile of lumber.

2. Objective versus subjective physicality

What is "boat"*? My basic argument would begin at: "boat" is a floating object that can carry another unfloating object on/above/through* water. So to the perceptions of any animal other than a human the object under discussion is not "boat". But to a human this unfloating uncarrying object can be understood to be a boat because another human, even one unknown to us, communicated their intention that this pile of actively collected and shaped materials should be a boat and should be experienced as a boat. So we are honouring that unknown person's intention by sharing their understanding that this is a boat, even after it ceases to float and carry. Humans expend a lot of time and energy on honouring each others' intentions in ways that most other animals don't most of the time. The next question is, of course, whether an object intended to be a conventional fishing boat but built incompetently so it has never floated and carried could be argued to be "boat" because I don't think many people would honour that intention however well meant....

* If a submarine is "boat" then "through water" (without unintentionally sinking) must be included.

- Reading: 51 books to 7 May 2025.

- Readalong: Aurora Australis, this week Trials of a Messman (and reading A Pony Watch for discussion next week):
Text: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Trials_of_a_Messman
Text: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/A_Pony_Watch

48. Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, by Tony Hoagland, 2010, poetry, 4/5

[Quote:] Here is what we know:
history is a car wreck from which
our parents did not escape;
our nation is a career criminal;
we were raised to be liars and deniers.

49. Revisited the 90s via a sequential art time machine. Andi Watson has made much better comics but he was funny from the first. Quasiquotes:
~ Pay your chops, hone your dues, and curve your learning. ~
~ World's Biggest Mini Golf Course! ~
Also lots of visual references to cops as pigs, lol, and a thought bubble about them harassing innocent Black motorists, because decent people already knew Black Lives Matter.

50. Silence, by Gillian Clarke, 2024, poetry, 4/5

[Quote:] Noon silence, and the sun is high.
The cattle drift away,
jigsaw pieces of black and white,
fragmented through trees.

[Quote:] Over city, village, and lonely farm
that old stone, the cold moon
rises, glows
with its borrowed light.

Trees scrawl last words on the sky,
erased by darkness.

- Readalong reminder for next week:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Trials_of_a_Messman

- Citizen science: I photographed male on male mating in a species of invertebrate, which has been confirmed by a specialist (I tend to assume most sexed species with overlapping habitats and active mating behaviour attempt some form of same-sex mating behaviour). [/watching porn for science] Also realised the narrow black flies with red bums that I assumed were sawflies are actually BLOOD BEES, lol. And we had a Fluffy Seed Day. This morning I was asked to participate in an international bio-science project by providing data I'm already collecting and reporting. No additional effort whatsoever? Count me in! :D

- Birb log, 3 May: three pairs of Jackdaws turned up together to raid my lawn for beakfuls of grass clippings, presumably for their nests (we don't mow often and leave the clippings for wildlife, which makes the lawn healthier too). The last two birbs had a mild pecking-order dispute despite there being more than enough bounty for eveyone spread out across a large area. /lol, Jackdaws

- Habitat improvement: now my hayfever is calming down I've hoovered ALL the things.

- Cluttering: I have a sudden yearning to own this monk's seat, although I have neither the space nor a use for it:
https://www.sellingantiques.co.uk/410633/oak-monks-bench-armchair/
Or very second best, this metamorphic chair:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/126637105766

( Days 27 April - 3 May 2025 )