When people who live significant lives die, you expect the newspaper to carry an obituary. You expect the obituary to capture at least a bit of what made this one life significant.
Yesterday’s note was about John Searle, one of the more interesting philosophers of our times. After seeing the obituaries, I’d say that newspaper folks hadn’t followed Searle’s thought.
The writers grasped part of what Searle had to say — the part that kicked up a controversy among those who think that computer programs are good models for the human mind. But the obituaries had little to say about Searle’s view on why scientists have been unable to give an account of consciousness.
Francis Crick, one of the great scientists of our times, said there were only two questions that interested him: how can we account for life and for consciousness?
After playing a role in explaining how DNA works, Crick famously promised a similar breakthrough in our understanding of consciousness.
We’re still waiting, and people are still looking for an answer. Searle offered a clear explanation why, given the limits of how we think about science, that’s not possible.
Artificial Intelligence is in the news. I can see why obituary writers would report what Searle had to say on the topic. I can’t understand why anyone would think that’s the most important work he did.
The student journalists at the University of California, where Searle taught, tried to give us a sense of his personality. But the facts they mustered — that he lost his emeritus status because of sexual harassment allegations and that he was unpopular with some graduate assistants — don’t explain the significance of his life. They don’t explain why we ordinary readers on the other side of the country are reading, hoping to find some insight. I don’t know why anyone would read about the life of someone who’s best known for being fired for being a jerk.
The work of writing takes many forms. Newspaper work might be the humblest and lowliest. But news reports from these lowly sources are important. They come into your house with the comics and box scores. In small, humble ways, they influence the way people see the world.
I’m sure all of us who ever worked for a paper thought we should raise the standards. We erred in many ways.
But it seems to me that the central problem is finding people who like to think, who like to do the difficult work of understanding what challenging thinkers are saying.
Even the small communities — especially those that have a college — have thinkers who have new ways of looking at problems we all face. I think newspapers should find writers who can understand what those folks are saying. That is news, and we should be slipping a little of it into the community conversation, along with the comics and box scores.
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