The Uncanny in Animation

There is a spectrum of experiences in my consumer life of simulations which lead to the uncanny. There is a vocaloid concert which is too unhuman to contain the uncanny.  Regardless of what particular people may think of virtual concerts, a lot of people have a strong positive response to them, as testified by the live audience in this video. The voices are too obviously computerized to be in the valley in my opinion. The animation is not attempting at a human realism, rather staying at the anime-style level.

Next is the strangely real in anime, which garners a positive reaction. Actually, it is because it is strangely real that the experience has a positive affect. This is not to say that the uncanny valley is not real or diverges, but that there is something to be said for being really near the drop off point or stylishly uncanny. For instance, the show Angel Beats has a simulation of rock concert which is strangely real for something obviously animated.

Leaning into the valley, there is Tom Hanks in Polar Express (I didn't think it was all that creepy though.)

Finally, there is the newest technology:

My question that I derived from this representative continuum is about the relation of the uncanny to the most positive encounter with a simulation. There are two possibilities:

1. The peak of positive affect is the last point of uncanny simulation.
2. The peak contains just enough uncanny to be just right.

While I think 1 is how people normally think of the Uncanny valley, I feel that 2 is probably correct. To me, the uncanny is like a thrill, and like all thrills, too much produces an negative affect. Just like many people like the Angel Beats rock concert, some people like horror movies or bungie jumping. There is a certain excitement. 

Dexter and the Uncanny Valley

Here's the opening sequence to Dexter for those who don't watch it:

Sartre Versus Merleau-Ponty

Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, even though did not completely disagree with one another, they had their differences. Even though Sartre's idea of freedom is simple in the sense that it does not emphasize experience, simplicity may be his downfall. Correct me if I am wrong, but Sartre would say that the way that we see the world and the way that we respond to it is based off our perception of the situation. To him, the way that we see the situation is easily manipulated/altered. Because of that, he does not see the need to emphasize experience. In any case, for him, experience is a marginal factor to freedom and choice (not saying that they are the same thing). For instance, a women presented with a home intruder at night has the option to be courageous or be scared. It is her choice. She can fight to stay alive or she can choose to give up. Her reaction is her freedom. She is not limited by her freedom, nor is her freedom limited by her experience. She is always free to make her own decision on how to react to her givens or her situation. This example is radical because Sartre's idea of freedom is radical. If you are still following me, then Sartre's idea of freedom is absolute and most likely view experience is marginal.

On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty on the other hand is not that radical. Even though it is not as radical, does not mean that his argument is better. Merleau Ponty does not believe that individuals are completely free (even though he might have overly interpreted Sartre). Merleau Ponty feels that individuals are limited in there choices by their environment and their reality. Here, facticity plays a bigger role. Better yet, our experiences play a bigger role. In the same example, Merleau-Ponty would see that the woman's decision may be based on what chances she may have to survive or if her environment is conducive to the challenge or her situation. Here, her experiences and knowledge plays a bigger role. Her choice is technically her "choice". Yes, she has to make a decision, but her decision is not based completely on her free-will, but also on her limitations. Thus, free-will is not absolute.

I understand both sides of the issue, but I would have to agree that Sartre made the better argument. Though Sartre is more radical, Merleau Ponty takes the responsibility of choices away from the individual, and places it more on the environment and the world. I do not know how Merleau-Ponty's interpretation is beneficial to the individual and the world. At least, I know with Sartre that responsibility and choices are assumed in the individual, and not on the environment. What do you think?

Divided Reality

In our last few philosophers we read, each divides reality into two realities each with its own nuances. These categorical distinctions provide a narrative about human freedom. The acknowledgement of limits of freedom play a major role in Sartre and Merleau-Ponty but not so much in Camus. The recognition of human freedom plays a similar role in Sartre and Camus, but Merleau-Ponty argues for a different kind of recognition which depends equally on those limits.

In Sartre analysis of Bad Faith, he argues that the human reality is a combination of facticity and transcendence. Facticity is the realm in which we are not free, and transcendence is the realm in which we are. The nuances of this division helps Sartre construct a narrative of a subject who is bad faith about either their transcendence or facticity. This division futher reflects a phenomenology of freedom where the feeling of control of events and the realizing of possibilities of the future but cannot control or change the past. Sartre, for instance, implies that the past is part of facticity in his homosexual example of bad faith. I disagree with this phenomenology of freedom because I do not see possibility or freedom as part of human experience or reality, rather what has been mislabeled the experience is actually a false judgement. Humans experience the thoughts of alternatives, the criteria in which they pick from hypothetical, and the actions that result from that thinking, but they do not experience where their thoughts come from. This is an example of where absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Our knowledge now from neuroscience reveals the material of mind to be the same as other things-in-themselves, which, according to Sartre, have mere facticity.

Camus divides reality into the human and that of the world. The human is that of revolt, freedom, and passion, and the world is mundane, determined, and indifferent. The consequences of this division is a narrative about suicide of two extremes. One is resignation to the indifference of the world, and the other is to remake the world as reflecting the human. The first leads to nihilism and suicide. The second leads to escapes into theism, secular ethics, and science all of which posit ultimate truths about the world. Both are forms of suicide because they mean the human must reject his or her own revolt, freedom, and passion. In other words, the human can only truly be alive if they maintain a revolt against the Absurd. Of course, my problem is the whole division between the human and its world. While I am sympathetic to the revolt which distinguishes the human from its world, I believe the human is not distinct from the world and merely part of an indifferent causal chain.

Merleau-Ponty divides the field of freedom into two forces. The out-going Sinngebung and the in-going adversity act to create the field. Merleau-Ponty narrative of the two forces comes from the belief that freedom requires a world in which a subjects act. This is in reaction to a misunderstanding of Sartre philosophy. Merleau-Ponty believes that Sartre's freedom requires only the subject and is abstracted from the real world. I most agree with Merleau-Ponty's freedom because I recognize as well that humans act in the world and whether you consider that acting free or not is irrelevant to the facts of human existence.

"Most" and "Best" Living

In class on Tuesday we discussed Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, which tackles the question, “in a world devoid of god and values, why don’t we just commit suicide?.” Camus argues that both physical suicide and philosophical suicide provide as a means to “confessing that life is too much” (189). In class, we identified that both suicides rectify absurdity. The absurd man does not commit suicide, and instead constantly confronts the contradiction of the meaning of life.

On Tuesday, we discussed the possible meanings of “most” and “best” in Camus’ statement that “what counts is not the best living but the most living” (194). Dr. J said that she thinks more living means more days of life, which is what I agree with. I mentioned in class that I think that Camus’ statement that more living is better than best living seems to contradict the popular motto “live life to the fullest.” “Most living” seems to indicate the idea of avoiding the situations that would endanger maximizing your number of days, which challenges risk-taking situations encountered in the “full, best living.” What do you interpret “most living” and “best living” to mean?

In addition to the possible interpretations of Camus’ statement, we discussed the three consequences that result from the confrontation with the absurd: revolt, freedom, and passion. We brought up the point that these consequences seems to be anti-universal values. However, the consequences seem to contradict Camus’ statement that more living is better than best living. If “more living” constitutes living with revolt, freedom, and passion, then what is “best living”? In class, someone mentioned that these consequences of confronting absurdity seems to point towards a type of “best living” that we do currently, which would not follow the context of “more living” by my definition. I am struggling with what the difference is between “most” and “best.” Does Camus mean for the consequences to be contradictory with his statement that “most living” is better? Do you even think that such ideas are contradictory?

On another not, we looked at the myth of Sisyphus and mentioned that Sisyphus has encountered the absurd, realizes that there is not purpose to his existence, and yet continues to live. In order to live by Camus definition, there needs to be a constant revolt and awareness of one’s life and freedom (196). How is Sisyphus an absurd hero, and hence create his own values and own his fate if he is condemned to rolling a rock up a mountain for the rest of eternity? Also, how is Sisyphus "living his life to the fullest" after confronting the absurd?

The One True Philosophical Problem

Albert Camus states in The Myth of Sisyphus that the only pressing philosophical issue, the one that must be addressed before all else, is suicide. All other issues, such as “whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories” (188), need only be addressed after a philosopher can justify his or her choice to continue living. It is certainly a reasonable argument. If humans constantly have the option to continue living or to off themselves, why is it we tend to choose the former? Camus states that “killing yourself amounts to... confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it” (189), and it also reveals a dissatisfaction with the “uselessness of suffering” (189).

Suicide in the face of a situation that is too much to bear is easy to understand. Financial woes, physical or emotional abuse, and periods of depression, while all temporary problems, tend to elicit a more permanent reaction. Life becomes too much. The portion I find more interesting is suicide in the face of a life that we do not understand. Camus suggests that previously the question was “whether or not life had to have meaning to be lived” (193). Why continue pushing the stone up the hill if it has no meaning? Why not just commit suicide and escape from the futility of the routine? Yet Camus continues, saying that life “will be lived all the better if it has no meaning” (193). To me, this means (and please correct me if I'm mistaken) that our existence is more meaningful when we assign our own significance to it. If there is no inherent meaning initially present, it allows for more potential. We have no gods to please, no deities to impress; the only happiness we have to answer for is our own, and we create meaning in our life accordingly.

Yet it is easy to disappear into habits and routines, to grow tired of the endless succession of days. Some even take their own life due to boredom (namely George Sanders, whose suicide note actually read Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored). But the more days we spend in this world, the more meaning we can put into our life, and the more living we accomplish. Even if life grows dull, we're told to continue onward. Camus sums up his argument by saying that “the point is to live” (196). The point is to go out, accumulate experiences, assign our own meaning, and live.

In Defense of Philosophical Suicide

After talking about Albert Camus and the philosophy of the absurd on Tuesday, I got to thinking about Camus’ critique of committing philosophical suicide. Camus spends a lot of time discussing what facing the absurd looks like and even gives us an example of the absurd hero: Sisyphus. What he does not do (at least in the short reading we did) is give an argument for why committing philosophical suicide is wrong. In fact, I would argue that when one encounters the absurd, it is actually the task of philosophy to try to interpret and understand. I recognize that the absurd qua absurd cannot be understood, but perhaps we can at least do the best we can.

Through philosophy, we can interrogate and question our world. We can elevate some parts of that world and subordinate others. We can learn to navigate and live in that world. Perhaps most importantly, we can communicate with others who both inhabit our world and encounter their world in a similar way that we do. When encountering these others, I can share parts of my world and the other can share parts of hers. Through language, we can come to a consensus (or at least a provisional contentious about certain aspects of this world.

It seems like the absurd man can’t do any of these things. He revolts, is passionate and free, but he cannot share anything about his life with anyone else. When the absurd man embraces the absurdity, he enters into a solipsistic world. He relinquishes all ground by which he can judge value because he rejects the possibility that value could exist. He cannot relate what he is doing or how he is feeling because he cannot connect with the other.

One consequence (perhaps unintended) of taking the absurd man’s position is a kind of extreme relativism. All values are essentially the same because the absurd man has no basis upon which to judge them. I can just as easily hold the belief A as I can not-A. In fact, the absurd man would have no objection to both A and not-A being true. He is not as lazy in his relativism as the lazy relativist, but there seem to be a lot of similarities between them.

The Implications of Multiple Interpretations

Continuing the trend of Kafka-related posts, I ascribe to the belief that the door keeper is somehow related to the man. Whether he placed there by a higher power or created by the man’s own mind, his purpose is directly related solely to the man.

That being established, I interpreted the title to be temporal initially, but recognized the spatial aspect to it later. This gave the passage a sort of double meaning as I read it. The man stood physically before the Law, but he could not enter because of the authority – an aspect which can only be gained through power or a legal system. He also stood at point in time when he was without the law – “before the law” – because was not physically in it.

For me, this raises many questions. How is it that the country man seems to have a sense of moral right and wrong at least to the extent of understanding he cannot enter because of the authority of the guard? If it is temporal, what is existence before the law compared to it after? Why is the law so desired?

Regardless of interpretation, these questions have not been easy to answer – mainly because they deal with issues not directly addressed by the passage. However, though that makes them all seem tangential, they are actually qualifiers which could aid in the understanding of whether the realm described in the passage are part of actuality or a perceived reality in the mind of the country man.

Further along this line, it becomes a question of the significance of perceived reality and implications of a personally crafted law and doorkeeper versus that of an actual doorkeeper protecting the actual law. The interpretations are too numerous to list in their entirety, but the main ideas seem to be the importance of a self-made limitation on our own value systems versus our interactions and importance placed on the actual value systems that exist within our “world.”

I am sorry this is a bit abstract, but let me know what you think if you feel you have a good answer to any of the ideas I brought up.

Its all One...

I really fell in love with the idea that this passage is all really a psychological commentary by Kafka. I mean it really is genius, and somewhat in the trend of Plato/Socrates, who described other abstract notions such as justice as being in the soul (or one might supplement psyche). So if Kafka was really doing just this, he would have been following in a deep tradition started by the father of Western Philosophy.

When I first read this passage, I like most, saw the before as spatially, and I am still not convinced that it is not. Perhaps it is both temporal and spatial, who knows. While it is really relevant in the physical story, if it is all taking place in the man's mind, I think it is less so. My meaning is that whether it is before the man reached the law (spatially) or before the law was created in the man (temporally) either way it is an expression of the man being without law. This I think is extremely interesting.

Taken this way, the passage might be an explanation of the man who limits himself from reaching his own potential of creating his own "free" law by imposing a law of not being able to create "free"laws on himself. (In doing so, utilizing the law he sought, but using it to his disadvantage) Such as to explain why we follow others laws; becasue we tell ourselves we have no choice, when really, as free beings, we have all the choice, but we limit ourselves by believing in the doorkeeper in our minds.

I find this to be interesting, anyone else?

Blame the Man at the Gate!

In continuing the trend of discussing Kafka's Before the Law, and as a sort of response to Matt's post, I want to look at why the man should have resisted the doorkeeper's supposed authority. While I completely understand Matt's concern with the hypocrisy of condemning the man when we ourselves would submit just as quickly, I think that that only extends so far. The man in the story spent his entire life waiting to be allowed through the gate; I highly doubt that anyone in his right mind would wait forever for something without action. Additionally, the man's goal was not a negligible one, such as wanting to walk through grounds with a No Trespassing sign, it was along the lines of his life's goal. He gave up everything he had to the doorkeeper in hopes of bribing him. The doorkeeper repeatedly tells the man that he is "only taking it to keep [him] from thinking [he has] omitted anything" (172). This implies that there is nothing the man can give that will earn him passage. If this is the case, what hope should he have that he'll ever make it through? What baffles me even more is that the doorkeeper also told the man that it was possible for him to get around the doorkeeper without permission, difficult though it may be. I like to think that if I were barred from reaching my life's goal by an obstacle as interminable and yet surmountable as the doorkeeper, I would wait no longer than a few days before trying my luck.

Sartre's concept of the adversarial coefficient only adds to this. If everything outside of oneself is a facticity and is not inherently helpful or harmful to one's agenda, then personal perception is the only factor impeding progress. In this case, the doorkeeper's power is given to him by the man because of his perception of the doorkeeper's presence as strong and intimidating. If the man were able to overcome this self-imposed submission, the doorkeeper would lose all so-called authority. However, the man continues to handicap himself and any progress toward his goal of reaching the Law.

The Doorkeeper as Conscience

We started our discussion of Kafka’s Before the Law by talking about the ambiguity in his use of the word before. I was one of the few who thought Kafka meant before in the temporal sense.

Because I interpreted ‘before’ temporally, I took ‘before the law’ to mean the man’s conscience.  This fits in with the idea Zach brought up in class. He raised the very interesting idea that the traveler and the doorkeeper are one and the same.  If we take the doorman to be the man’s conscience, we can perhaps understand why he is so unwilling to pass through the door without the doorkeeper’s permission. To arrive at Law, one would have to pass by one’s own conscience. It is a difficult thing, as a human, to completely turn your back on your own conscience. This interpretation could explain why the gate would only be made specifically for the man. Each man must interpret Law in terms of his own conscience; that is inescapable. However, if the doorkeeper truly is the man’s conscience, why would his conscience stand in the way of the Law?

Well, Law in the story is always written with a capital l, implying that it is the product of a higher force and, because of that, it is immutable. To find the Law would mean to have a very definite code of how one should live, a code defined by someone of than oneself. Perhaps defined by a deity or maybe as a compilation of each individual’s own personal law. As Kafka says, “the Law, [the man] thinks, should be accessible at all times and to everyone…” Maybe to find the Law would mean to give up one’s freedom as individual and that, as individuals, we cannot help but to frame universal law within our own moral standards.  In fact, as the man waits at the door, he never comes any closer to the Law, but has many conversations with the doorkeeper. The man is getting to know his conscience better and better, making it harder to remove himself from his conscience. In his moment of death the door to the Law is shut by the doorkeeper. This could be an expression of how each individual must die as just that, an individual – entirely alone with only one’s conscience, not a universal set of morals.

I really hope this made sense and didn’t seem too far-fetched. Let me know what you think.

Don't Blame the Man at the Gate

In Kafka's Before The Law, we encounter the man at the gate. He waits his entire life for admittance to the Law, or whatever it is behind the gate that the gatekeeper is guarding. He blindly accepts the gatekeeper's authority that hadn't been established nor given any merit. He eventually passes in front of the gate and the gatekeeper tells him it was only his gate to pass through, and was made for him.

Initially we were quick to jump the man and blame him for not questioning the authority. I think this is wrong of us to do for certain reasons. First and foremost, we must assume that the man came from a society where there was already a power hierarchy and he was just a country man, who has not been concerned with questioning power. It is simply human nature, in a slavish morale you could say, to not question the present authority, even when it is stopping you from accessing something that is yours, such as the law and this man's gate. Also, i think it is foolish for us to blame the man for not entering the gate without permission. If we are put in his situation, or something similar, and told not to enter, we do not enter, especially if a guard is present. We act even more sheepish than him and don't ask questions when there is something as simple as a "No Trespassing" sign on a gate. That's all it takes for us to not enter a gate. We are at fault for blaming the man for not trying to enter the gate with the presence of the guard, when it takes much less for us to not even question the authority or legitimacy of an opposing force.

I think we should be asking the question, not why the man didn’t try to enter against the guard, but rather what exactly is the guard doing there and why? Is he a figment of the country man’s imagination, or was he placed there by a greater force that is there to guard the law? But if that’s the case, then why doe he not let the man through or admit him to the law since the gate to the law is made solely for the man? Or is the man wrong about the Law by thinking it is beyond the gate, when rather the Law is simply the guard standing there, and by submitting himself to the guard is giving the Law its legitimacy?

Choosing Oneself

The following examples of choosing oneself are purposefully controversial and thus bring up strong feelings often.


A person is asked if they could change one thing about his or herself in which this change would give him or her a qualitatively better life. For instance, this person could have the choice to relive life as a heterosexual rather than face the traumas of homophobia, or a black person might be given the choice to live as a white child, thus benefiting from inequality rather than suffering from it.

Many people argue that by changing themselves like that they would lose some essential part of themselves. In other words, they choose homosexuality, blackness, or any other identity for themselves. The quality is no longer an accident and changing it is linked to self-denial or destruction. To choose to change is to choose not to be.

Why do people choose some qualities as essential while others as not. For instance, transgenders deal with two kinds of essentialism. One is the essentialism that says the body determines gender and changing that is denial of the body. This essentialism is associated with the cisnormative society. The other is that psychology is essential to gender and denying that is denying self. This essentialism is associated with the transnormative progressive position.

Jean-Paul Sartre would argues that the self has no essence. This means that neither cisnormative and transnormative narratives are right. This leaves us with the question of what a person should do under any circumstance where they can change something about themselves. Ought a black person choose blackness or whiteness? (Not choosing is the same as choosing blackness)

Jean-Paul Sartre argues that we choose for everyone. Does that mean that what the black person chooses all should choose? Does that mean everyone ought to be white or stay the complexion they currently are? Does the transsexual reassign the sex of everyone? Does the homosexual have sex with men for all men and women?

This seems absurd to me, so perhaps I misinterpret Jean-Paul Sartre's moral theory.Perhaps choosing the self is only for the self and not the business (or responsibility) of the world. This would mean that choosing blackness is an equal choice to choosing whiteness.

Freedom as a Limitation of Freedom

I found our discussion about Sartre's definition of freedom to be a little troubling. In an attempt to understand this definition, we ended up separating Sartre's definition from what has become the modern notion of freedom. That is, we differentiated the concept of freedom as the mere ability to imagine any project we may conceive from the more contemporary notion of freedom as the fulfillment and fruition of our will. Sartre does this, I believe, in an attempt to expand the boundaries of our freedom, which he does through his ideas concerning the "brute fact" of an object vs. our imposition of adversity: if objects simply exist objectively, and it is merely our our personal decision on a subjective project that in turn defines the object as an imposition or not, then essentially there exists no objectively existing impediments or limitations. I am inclined to agree with our ability and propensity to define objects as they are related to the project in which they are involved. However, I believe this concept of freedom, as it posits the extending existence of an object solely in the mind, actually limits our human freedom; freedom becomes restricted to the imagination alone, and is not able to be expressed through physical attempts, because then we would set up objects as impediments by our decision to act on an individual project. But in our attempt to not create these impediments, we are limited not only in what we can achieve but also in what we can conceive: in order to not create an impediment as they are defined in our mind, we cannot conceive of projects that cannot be fulfilled; if we exercise our "freedom" in this way, we necessarily create these impediments, which Sartre claims is the real barrier to our freedom. However, these limitations arise out of the very exercise of our freedom. In this circular manner, it would appear that the creation of impediments is inescapable and not an expression of freedom at all. In this way, Sartre's definition of freedom actually becomes itself an impediment to freedom. What does this inescapable quality of freedom do to our conception of human existence as the essence of our freedom? Are we actually free to define ourselves and our situation in the way that we would choose? This question has huge implication on the idea of bad faith: is bad faith in fact possible given that freedom does not seem wholly capable of transcendence? Or does this concept actually strengthen the concept of bad faith, by defining the manner in which bad faith is an improper use of our ability to transcend the situation; in fact, the we do not maintain the ability to transcend at all...

Response-able we are; Do something with it

The last few classes and in last week’s posts, people have been debating whether Sartre’s radical declaration of responsibility would be beneficial if everyone followed such an idea.

In class, we broke down Sartre’s idea of responsibility into the understanding that everyone is response-able, which means everyone can respond any given situation. When discussing the consequences from everyone bearing the responsibility, it seems that many people were not convinced that a better world would result.

For example, Ben and Allison mentioned that the bystander effect is a problem in this idea of responsibility because people would “pass off” taking responsibility for a situation because there are other people involved. In other words, the incentive to take action would decrease because there are other people that bear the same responsibility as you.

I understand the problem of the bystander effect but I disagree. I think that if there was a universal understanding and following of Sartre’s responsibility, then the world would be better.

If everyone is able to respond to any situation, wouldn’t that simple idea serve as an incentive for someone to respond to a situation in a positive, beneficial manner? For example, in class we discussed how everyone in class is aware of the war in Iraq. Because we are aware of the war, we must respond to the situation of the war. Personally, I would like the war to stop because my Uncle is over in Iraq; however, I am not advocating for the war to stop through any of my actions. I am not actively trying to stop the war, which means that I am responding in a way that advocates for the war to continue.

Doesn't an idea of advocating for a war because of lack of participation serve as an incentive to take action? I think so. To think locally, or at least nationally, we have issues of poverty and homelessness (with humans and animals). If we are not trying to combat these problems, whether through volunteering at soup kitchens, protesting, etc., then we are saying that we are okay with such problems.

If everyone realized that our response to a situation/problem/etc. impacts the world as a whole and not just us individually, then I think that our society would have less hostility. I do not think that all or our problems would disappear, but I do think that we would be on the way to finding solutions and enacting laws to help combat worldwide problems.

What do you think? Do you agree that Sartre’s idea of responsibility would lead to a better world? Or do you disagree?