There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ - NOEMA

Chalmers claims that experience cannot be accounted for by science. But scientific understanding is not extraneous to experience; it is entirely about experience. Empiricism, the grounding of knowledge in experience, is not alternative to science; it is a main component of science’s traditional conceptual ground. As the Russian intellectual Alexander Bogdanov put it, science is the historical process of a successful collective organization of our experience.

It is misleading to see science, as often naively portrayed, as a direct account of an absolute and objective world, observed and described from its outside. If we think in this manner, we introduce dualism. No surprise, then, that we find dualism down the road: an irreducible gap between subject and object of knowledge. We have introduced it upfront.

The Outsiders (1983) ****

Beautifully filmed, stylishly produced, somewhat exagerrated look at male adolescense with a terrific cast lead by a startling Ralph Macchio. Coppola in peak form.

Javier Bardem on Defending Palestine and Loving Penelope Cruz

Talking to Bardem is not unlike talking to another parent at school dropoff in Brooklyn; his concerns, beyond what film to make next, are similar to my own. Bardem’s 15-year-old “got his first phone less than a year ago. No social media, of course,” he says. “They work with computers at school, which we are OK with and not OK with.” What Bardem and Cruz hope for, the actor says, is that their children learn to sit with themselves, and they’ve tried to teach them to meditate. “We try to make them understand the importance of being bored, of wasting your time, of sitting down and looking at the ceiling.” This refusal to be distracted is where creativity originates. “The younger generation has less patience, less attention, less care in detail,” he says. “We are all living on a fast pace, and it takes a lot of courage to take the time to sit down and enjoy something for what it is, without thinking you are missing something else. It’s what we are consuming on a daily basis through our phones — and this attention deficit we are all having.”

El (1953) ***

Nicely atmospheric though melodramatic tale of bizarre obsession with the typical Buñuel touches. Top notch photography and Hitchcockian set pieces.

Witchfinder General (1968) *

It's very well made on a micro budget, and Vinnie does a good job, but it is such a depressing and dark tale. In younger days I might have been able to enjoy the filmmaking but the parallels to contemporary reality are too much.

Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937) *

It's not so much the "yellowface" but the lackluster script and low B cast. Completely forgettable.

Berlin Express (1948) *

I suppose we can forgive the massive amount of propoganda and naivete in the script and chalk it up to the times but the horrendous voice-over and the preposterous plot are too much.

The Phantom of Liberty (1974) **

Satire is very tough to pull off on film even for Buñuel. Still, the cast and the cinematography keep it watchable.