Gavin > Books: analytic-canon‎ (11)

We can evaluate the various outlooks on life and see which have the best consequences. In his assessment, the key to meaning in life is to be optimistic, thrilled, and actively try to improve conditions for people now and in the future. Live as fully and as ethically as you can, was his conclusion. Ramsey understood that inequalities get in the way of being thrilled by life. He put much effort into trying to make the world a fairer place. He also understood that individuals’ psychological makeups have an impact on whether one is depressed or not. His own tendency was to be cheerful—he was remembered as always smiling and looking rather pleased, not so much with himself but with things in general. He knew that Wittgenstein was not so disposed. But Ramsey too had periods of crippling anguish, and he thought that one should try to improve one’s life by engaging with what clinical psychology has to offer and by trying to be happy. If psychology can help change our outlook for the better, we should avail ourselves of it, as he had.

Ramsey was not a full-out utilitarian, to whom discounting is the obvious and correct thing to do.

He also suggested to Frank that he had an Oedipus fixation, drawing on the Freudian contention that every son wants to kill his father so that he can have sex with his mother. Glover told Frank to have a talk with Margaret, and that seems to have helped: ‘I did and she was awfully nice.’ But his three months or so with Glover were on the whole not working: ‘It wasn’t really improving my mind very much, so I decided to stop it and go back to sea.’ Margaret too was being psychoanalysed, by Dr James Glover, the brother of Frank’s therapist. James Glover was also psychoanalysing Dick and Geoff. Their analysts had no qualms about discussing a patient’s analysis not only amongst themselves, but also with other patients.

[Wittgenstein] had never before said of anyone that they had understood the [Tractatus] and, as far as I know, he would never say it again.

Ramsey’s mind repulsed me. When I came to Cambridge months ago I thought that I would not be able to have dealings with him, for I had such unpleasant memories of
him from our meeting  years ago with Keynes in Sussex... I could communicate quite well with
R. about some things. But in the course of time it did not really go well, after all. R’s incapacity for genuine enthusiasm or genuine reverence, which is the same, finally repulsed me more & more... his criticism didn’t help along but held back and sobered... one labored arduously for a long time in vain to explain something to him until he suddenly shrugged his shoulders about it & said this was self-evident... He had an ugly mind. But not an ugly soul. He truly relished music & with understanding. And one could see by looking at him what effect it had on him. Of the last movement of one of Beethoven’s last quartets, a movement he loved perhaps more than anything else, he told me that it made him feel as if the heavens were open.

Frank’s sisters remembered that he wrote a terrible letter to their father, saying that Arthur had failed to get Frank proper medical treatment and so was responsible for his death. The gratuitous cruelty leaves one aghast. Wittgenstein was notoriously and severely self-critical. But he seems not to have understood that extending his brand of moral self-criticism to others was itself not very moral.

Frances said that it was clear that Wittgenstein shared with her both an immense personal sadness, as well as sympathy for Lettice. But he made poor and flippant jokes, perhaps to disguise emotions he couldn’t cope with, or perhaps to help Lettice keep her composure.

Consider first the more accurate form of the question. I believe tha

Consider first the more accurate form of the question. I believe that in about fifty years' time it will be possible, to programme computers, with a storage capacity of about 10^9 [bits], to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. The original question, "Can machines think?" I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.

Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words, and general educated opinion, will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted. I believe further that no useful purpose is served by concealing these beliefs. The popular view that scientists proceed inexorably from well-established fact to well-established fact, never being influenced by any improved conjecture, is quite mistaken. Provided it is made clear
which are proved facts and which are conjectures, no harm can result.