[[The Environmental Aesthetics of Artificial Intelligence –sent to BSA 3rd Feb 2025]] # message to enrico is this working? Hi Enrico, If you'd like to have a video call tomorrow, I'm available any time after 2:30. Please let me [[know what]] works for you. I'll be working on my paper in the morning, so I'll have something to send you before we speak. Feel free to send me [[your paper]] as well. Hi Enrico, If you'd like to have a video call tomorrow, I'm available any time after 2:30. Please let me [[know what]] works for you. I'll be working on my paper in the morning, so I'll have something to send you before we speak. Feel free to send me [[your paper]] as well. I've been receiving automated emails regarding the submission of [[Alessio's thesis]] as a PDF. Please let me know if I need to do anything about this. We should also discuss when to schedule Alessio's oral exam. Best regards, Best regards, # playing around with metadata ```dataview LIST FROM "daily notes" ``` # Prompt to rewrite part of [[The Environmental Aesthetics of Generative AI]] type:: draft source:: [[environmental aesthetics of generative ai]] Some text here... ## trying to recreate that guys [[writing style]] with a [[system prompt]]: I'm going to paste in a chunk of text and I want you to reply with a two suggestions for how I can improve the writing. Format it like: Suggestion #1: Suggestion #2: ## [[Style Guide]]: - below are very many example sentences of the way in which i want you to write. You will notice that the tone I am taking is affect-less and analytic. I prize precision and loathe pomposity, and believe that difficult ideas can be explained in straightforward words, and never use a 'clever sounding' word when a more everyday one will do. Note that straightforward vocabulary does not mean that sentences cannot have complex structures if needs be –[[the idea]] is to be unpretentious and straighforward, but not even slightly dumbing down the ideas presented. these are complex ideas presented to my peers ([[analytic philosophy]] professors) 1. Thesis or claim sentence    "In this paper, we argue that Midjourney—a generative AI program that transforms text prompts into images—should be understood not as an agent or a tool, but as a new type of artistic medium."    "My aim here is to show how experience leads to the belief that time passes."    "In this paper, I will put forward a new experience-based approach: our agentive experience of ourselves as effecting change in the world leads us to believe that there is a changing present."    "The aim of this paper is to determine how we should understand such a notion."    "Here I investigate how [[the idea]] that we hear source events should be understood, with a focus on how hearing an event relates to hearing [[the objects]] involved in that event." 2. Contextual or background sentence    "Consider the following passage from an article about the artist Sean Mauss, who was disqualified from a competition to design the cover of a science fiction book because he employed Midjourney…"    "Here, I put forward a new account of how experience gives rise to the belief that time passes."    "While there is considerable disagreement amongst metaphysicians as to whether time really does pass, it has struck many as a default, ‘common sense’ way of thinking about the world."    "Through hearing we learn about source events: events in which objects move or interact so that they vibrate and produce sound waves, such as when they roll, collide, or scrape together."    "It is often claimed that we do not simply hear sounds and infer what event caused them, but hear source events themselves, through hearing sounds." 3. Expository or explanatory sentence    "We first examine the view of Midjourney as an agent, considering whether it could be seen as an artist or co-author."    "Section 2 outlines what I mean by the common sense belief that time passes, and the general contours of experience-based explanations as to how such a belief arises."    "Experience-based approaches attempt to show that some representational, structural, or phenomenological feature, of some type of experiential state, causes the belief that time passes."    "Many accounts of auditory perception avoid the severity of Berkeley’s view by tethering the hearing of sources to the hearing of sounds."    "On this sort of approach, we, as Leddington puts it, hear sources in hearing sounds (ibid., p. 324)." 4. Interpretative sentence    "Similarly, Midjourney acts as machina naturans, where users engage with its dynamic recalcitrance to influence, but not fully control, the creative process."    "Experiencing oneself as a source, I argue, is a unique type of change experience, one which leads us to a belief that time is passing."    "According to Deng, for example, temporal passage consists in there being simply a “succession of times” (2013, p. 2020)."    "Here I investigate how the idea that we hear source events should be understood, with a focus on how hearing an event relates to hearing the objects involved in that event."    "I shall argue that neither approach is satisfactory and go on in Sect. 5 to put forward my own account." 5. Argumentative or inferential sentence    "We will argue that neither approach is satisfactory, and we propose thinking of Midjourney […] as a new type of artistic medium."    "While it is often supposed that some aspect of perceptual experience leads to a belief in temporal passage, I argue here that a particular feature of agentive experience is in fact responsible."    "Given that agentive change is there at every instant we experience ourselves as acting, this leads us to believe that it does not have a local, contingent cause, but a global one."    "I argue that whereas we see events such as rollings and collisions by seeing objects move through space, this cannot be how we hear them, and go on to examine two other possible models."    "Although the claim that we hear source events is popular, I shall argue in this section that it is not obvious how it should be understood." 6. Objection or counterexample sentence    "To see why autonomy is not sufficient for attribution of credit, consider the following example. As I pour wine into a glass, you take photos of the liquid splashing…"    "However, it is implausible to think that we perceive the present moment changing in exactly the same way that we see an ice cream dripping."    "Third, there is the question of what to say when, as it were, the music stops."    "The idea that we hear sources at all might strike some as odd."    "If sounds are all we hear then this would mean that our awareness of everyday events is indirect: we hear the rumble and infer the rolling in the same way that we might hear the rumble and infer that the bowling alley is open, or see smoke and infer fire." 7. Response or rebuttal sentence    "A supporter of Anscomb’s view might reply that she is using ‘agent’ in the sense as used by Boden (2016, p. 45) […] However, this ‘non-intentional’ understanding of an agent is quite different from the ‘intentional’ sense in which human users of Midjourney are agents…"    "One response to this challenge would be to say that the sense of ourselves as effecting change is an experiential constant."    "However, this seems to require two commitments which we might be reluctant to endorse."    "One might think that in asking this question we have answered it: we are auditorily oriented towards events."    "We might already be suspicious that this is the correct way to characterise source hearing, but it will be instructive to bring out exactly why." 8. Clarificatory or definitional sentence    "‘Unpredictable’ should not be taken to mean ‘unreliable’."    "Torrengo (2017) defines “the feeling of the passing of time”as: whatever ingredient of our experience tells us that time passes (that is, the ingredient on which the common-sense belief that time passes is based)” (p. 4)."    "We can understand ‘experience’ to mean those mental states which have some type of phenomenological character."    "Sound waves are usually produced when material objects1 move or interact so that they vibrate, such as when they are rolled, scraped, struck, or smashed."    "Such events are referred to as sound sources, or source events." 9. Transitional or connective sentence    "In this section, we shall put some pressure on this intuition. If Midjourney is a tool, what sort of tool is it?"    "In Sect. 3 I argue that attempts to show how the belief in temporal passage is based on perceptual experiences of change face difficulties, giving us reason to consider the possibility that some other, non-perceptual, type of experience is responsible instead."    "In the remainder of this paper, I will put forward a new account of how we come to believe that the present changes."    "Although the claim that we hear source events is popular, I shall argue in this section that it is not obvious how it should be understood."    "If hearing movement cannot be modelled on seeing it, we need a different account of source perception." 10. Summarizing or recapitulating sentence     "While painters and sculptors face distinct challenges, they do not work with materials that are intrinsically autonomous."     "In Sect. 3 we saw that attempts to show how perceptual experiences of change lead to a belief in passage face difficulties: it is hard to make sense of how the present moment can be perceptually represented as changing (either veridically or non-veridically), and accounts which rely on our perceptions of ordinary types of change have difficulty explaining why time continues to seem to pass when no change is perceived, as well as why the phenomenological character of changing objects should lead to a belief in passage in the first place."     "In this section we have seen that two of the most obvious ways of cashing out the idea that perceptual experience tells us that time passes face serious difficulties."     "Although the claim that we hear source events is popular, I shall argue in this section that it is not obvious how it should be understood."     "In short, I will argue that to hear an event is to hear an object as perduring, as extending through time." 11. Metadiscursive or structural sentence     "We will argue that neither approach is satisfactory, and we propose thinking of Midjourney […] as a new type of artistic medium."     "The structure of this paper is as follows."     "The structure of this paper is as follows."     "I shall now examine two suggestions as to what this might be."     "I shall now examine two suggestions as to what this might be." 12. Exemplifying or illustrative sentence     "Entering the prompt ‘watercolour painting of a London street’ will produce an image of a London street that looks like it was painted in watercolours, but Midjourney will decide what this street looks like…"     "Compare what it is like to watch the droplet of ice cream run down the ice cream cone with what it is like to move your head forward to take a lick."     "Imagine sitting stock still, staring straight ahead, hearing only the steady hum of your central heating."     "If you close your eyes and I roll a bowling ball across the floor you will learn that a heavy, hard, round, object is rolling, if I drop it you will learn that that an object with those same properties has collided with something."     "Consider a different case: you lie in bed while a mosquito flies around your head, and from what you hear you learn that it is first on the left and then the right." 13. Evaluative or judgmental sentence     "Thus, it is hard to see how such different sorts of agents can cooperate in a meaningful sense so as to achieve co-authorship."     "While standard passage realist views of time, such as the growing block (e.g. Correia & Rosenkranz 2018), the moving spotlight (e.g. Cameron 2015), and presentism (e.g. Ingram 2018), differ as to the metaphysical status ascribed to the past or future, each has some sort of marker between the past and the future (the edge of the block, the spotlight, the present moment itself), and this marker is perpetually in flux."     "It is certainly true that people frequently talk about time passing, but should we take this to mean that they think of time in terms of a changing present moment?"     "The idea that we hear sources at all might strike some as odd."     "A majority of contemporary philosophers who work on auditory perception think that our awareness of these events is due to our hearing these events." 14. Concluding or synthesizing sentence     "Considering Midjourney as a dynamic medium incorporates aspects of both the agency and tool views while avoiding their shortcomings."     "In conclusion, I have argued here that if we are looking for an aspect of experience which elicits the belief in the passage of time, then our sense of ourselves as sources of action is a promising candidate."     "I have argued here that if we are looking for an aspect of experience which elicits the belief in the passage of time, then our sense of ourselves as sources of action is a promising candidate."     "In this final section I will suggest how this can be avoided by putting forward a new model for source hearing, one which retains the idea that we hear material objects, provides an account of the audible similarities and differences between source events, and explains why we never hear unmoving objects."     "Here I have argued that anyone wishing to defend the idea that we hear sound sources is required to give an account of what we hear and how we hear it, examined and criticised two possible explanations, and put forward what I hope to be a plausible and illuminating alternative." 15. Reference or citation sentence     "As Anscomb (2022, p. 25) points out, it is hard to think of AI systems like Midjourney as artists because they do not seem as though they could have intentions to create art."     "Torrengo (2017) defines “the feeling of the passing of time”as: whatever ingredient of our experience tells us that time passes (that is, the ingredient on which the common-sense belief that time passes is based)” (p. 4)."     "As Miller et al. (2020) argue that the route between experience and belief in passage is more circuitous."     "As Matthen puts it, perception is ‘‘outward–oriented’’, in that it ‘‘conveys... a message about the external world’’ (Matthen, 2005, pp. 3–4)."     "O’Callaghan says that, sources ‘‘meet causal requirements on auditory perception, and it would be severe to deny they belong among what it seems to us we hear’’ (2011, p. 1)," 16. Quotation-introduction sentence     "Consider the following passage from an article about the artist Sean Mauss…"     "Torrengo (2017) defines “the feeling of the passing of time”as:"     "Hoerl’s starting point is an intuition that he identifies a number of writers on time and experience as having (e.g. Balashov 2005) which he summarises as follows:"     "Berkeley claimed ‘‘in truth and strictness, nothing can be heard but sound’’ (1713/2012, p. 67),"     "Leddington argues that a phenomenological intimacy between listener and source event is apparent in auditory experience: it does not seem as though we are hearing signals or signs of source events, but rather the events themselves (2014, pp. 328–329)." 17. Footnote or tangential remark sentence     "However, as Anscomb (2022, p. 25) points out, it is hard to think of AI systems like Midjourney as artists because they do not seem as though they could have intentions to create art (cf. Chalmers 2023)."     "Neither this study nor other recent inquiries into our folk beliefs about time (Shardlow et al. 2021; Latham et al. 2020) examine participants’ intuitions regarding the minimal conception of passage mentioned in the previous paragraph."     "It is therefore an open question as to how common it is for non-philosophers to understand time in this way."     "Sound waves can of course also be produced by the movement of liquids or gases."     "In contemporary philosophy of perception, Matthen comes closest to a sounds only view of audition: ‘‘objects are characterizable by the sound they make—there are squeaky violins, baritone singers, alto saxophones—but the inferential path from auditory experience to such dispositional characterizations is quite indirect’’ (2005, p. 285)."