Steven Schroeder | born to sing: notes on Hartshorne
...approaching the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Charles Hartshorne’s Born to Sing
1. These notes are for the birds. What they are about is another matter.
2. They are notes on notes inviting notes. Notes on notes on notes inviting notes in time describe a score – in each moment, a map, perhaps, to mark a way to strike a chord.
3. What they are about is performance.
4. Birds are not ornithologists (xi). What birds do is a making of the world, not a theory of birds.
5. Nor are ornithologists birds. What ornithologists do is a making of the world. When we (they) study birds, what we (they) do is a world of words, and in that there is not only something of how we (they) think about what birds do but also something of how we (they) think about what we (they) do – a theory, perhaps.
6. Everything (including what we mean by “they”) depends on what we mean when we say “we.”
7. In what birds do, particularly in what we refer to as bird song, is there something of what they think about what they do? Do birds express an aesthetic sense in their songs? (xiii)
8. Hartshorne begins (and invites us to begin) with an aesthetic principle: complex as the subject demands, simple as the subject allows. Nothing more, nothing less.
9. This “principle of parsimony” is often invoked as though it were a logical imperative that mandates simple explanations. But, more accurately, it is an aesthetic principle (a heuristic) designed to keep complexity in check. A simple explanation of a complex phenomenon is likely to be misleading. An explanation as complex as the phenomenon it is intended to explain is likely to be useless. The simplest explanation that is satisfactory may not be simple.
10. In the study of animal (including human) behavior, behaviorism is often put forward as the best way to implement the principle of parsimony. When we act, we move parts of our bodies and/or our bodies as a whole; and, as Hartshorne puts it, these movements are in principle intersubjectively discernible, whereas any sensations or emotions the animals might be thought to experience seem problematic inferences from the movements, the behavior (1). The most obvious mistake here is assuming that what we see (what anyone can see) is simpler than what we can’t. A second, related, mistake, the one Hartshorne focuses on, is the assumption that describing what we see is a fully satisfactory way to understand ourselves or any other animal. Simply put, behaviorism is simpler than the subject allows.
11. A third mistake (a heuristic/bias that merits further exploration) is the “seeming problematic” that underwrites dismissal of sensations or emotions animals (including humans) might be thought to experience as inferences. That they seem to be includes the possibility that they aren’t – problematic, inferences, or both. Things aren’t always what they seem, and inferences are not always problematic. Even problematic inferences may be accurate, and to exclude them from description of animal (including human) behavior would leave us with superficial descriptions at best. If they are not inferences, they may exist independently of or codependently with the behavior; and they may be (as Hartshorne maintains, following Charles Sanders Peirce) as simple as the behavior with which they are connected. They may also be intersubjectively discernible and critical to understanding animal (including human) behavior.
12. Hartshorne distinguishes between aesthetic feeling and aesthetic thought, suggesting that birds are capable of the former but not the latter. The question, then, is what he means in this context by “thinking,” and what he means by “feeling.” And, perhaps more importantly, what difference, if any, the difference makes. What are birds doing when they sing if not announcing themselves in a world they are engaged in making? That much seems to be implied in the connection of bird song with territoriality. The song I hear when the robin sings outside my window in the morning is part of the built environment, and (without any need to invoke consciousness) it locates the robin in that built environment as surely as the walls around my living room and the window through which I hear the song locate me in this one. If we associate the building (or occupation) of a dwelling with thinking, why not associate thinking with the robin’s song? Consciousness is not essential in either the dwelling or the singing. If the (presumed) absence of consciousness in the bird makes us think its singing feeling rather than thought, then that absence in the human should make us think the same of my listening. But perhaps this is a quibble. It is no more surprising that birds do not engage in human thought or human feeling than that humans do not sing the songs of birds.
13. But, of course, we sometimes do. One of the most effective ways to describe a particular bird’s song is by singing it; and humans who are adept at imitating bird song have been among the most reliable sources of description. The ubiquity of portable recording devices (cellphones) means that every human is (potentially) able to “imitate” well, and it is rare to encounter a description of bird song that does not incorporate or link to an audio sample. When Hartshorne wrote Born to Sing, the question “what does that bird’s song sound like?” was most likely to be answered with words. The most common words in answer to that question now are “listen to this.” Does that mean there is no thinking involved in the exchange?
14. Or does it mean that a mockingbird going through its repertoire of local sounds (which may include not only bird song but also sounds made by humans and our various devices) is articulating a theory? A theory is the work of an observer who pieces fragments of their experience together to stage a world others can see whole. It is a spectacle, a vision that can shape the way others see the worlds we live in. Critical theory prods us to make the spectacle a conscious/intentional agent of change, but, with or without consciousness or intention, theory has the potential to change the way those who see it see the worlds we inhabit – and in doing so to change those worlds.
15. It seems to me that the mockingbird going through its repertoire of local sounds is doing theory in a way that is analogous to the way Hartshorne does theory in Born to Sing. Both are publishing a comprehensive record of a lifetime of experience, selecting and arranging in ways that highlight similarities and differences while bringing patterns to the attention of anyone who is listening (or reading) with care. Whether the selecting and arranging is intended to highlight similarities and differences or bring patterns to mind is not particularly relevant. With or without intention, similarities and differences are highlighted, and patterns are brought to mind. Those are what Nelson Goodman called ways of worldmaking, and they are expressions of aesthetic sense.
16. Hartshorne called out people who spoke of the mockingbird’s perfect imitations. (He was teaching at the University of Texas and living in Austin at the time Born to Sing was written, so he no doubt heard frequent claims of perfect imitation.) As a careful listener, Hartshorne was aware, first, that people speaking of perfect imitations were generally claiming that the mockingbird sounded exactly like the bird it was imitating (or, more modestly, that they could not tell the difference) and, second, that it sounded remarkably similar but discernably different. It is in the discernible difference that the mockingbird’s theory lies.
17. The difference between hearing the song of a cardinal, for example, and hearing the song of a mockingbird that brings a cardinal (or, for those who have never heard a cardinal, an unknown bird) to mind is a difference that makes a difference. It is at the very least the difference between a cardinal being present to a hearer by way of its song and a cardinal who is not there being made present to the hearer in the song of the mockingbird who is. And do keep in mind that the mockingbird is a hearer even if there is no other present. Bringing what is not there to mind (one’s own or an other’s), a sort of possibility thinking, is one of the things theories are good for. The “imperfection” of the mockingbird’s performance of a bit of cardinal song may be a marker to make the space (or resulting from the space?) in which that possibility thinking can take place. It is no more (or less) imperfect than, say, John Coltrane’s variations on Greensleeves. Admittedly, this assumes that the mockingbird is not trying to trick the hearer. If it is a trick, it is a good one – a joke that is another way to make way for possibility thinking. Having spent a lot of time around mockingbirds, I suspect it is a bit of both – as rich in aesthetic sense as it is in possibility.
8 June 2022
