Most actors find it difficult to see anything

The other night, while watching the movie 'Pride and Glory', I found myself captivated by the performance of Edward Norton. It was riveting. The other actors were pretty good, especially John Voight, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Ehle, but - without upstaging them or apprently drawing attention to himself in any obvious manner - Norton seemed to steal every scene he was in (and he was in a lot). This began to puzzle me. He was not making any of the usual actorish efforts to impress. But, neither was he sucking the audience in, making them move towards him, by withdrawing or enigmatically holding things back in some way. He was just there. Whether walking in the street or simply standing in the room, there he was. But, again, this wasn't about either 'presence' or absence of it. "What is going on?" I kept asking myself. And, then I cracked it.

I noticed him looking at the other characters and his surroundings and I became aware that he was really seeing them, and that his face was reacting accordingly. Not in a crude way - not in a "here is my 'looking at someone/something intensely' face" way - but with great subtlety. It highlighted the huge behavioural difference between seeing something and pretending to see it, and showed quite clearly that most actors fail to cater for this.

Norton's 'performance' also illustrated a philosophical view. I call it "people holism".

Platonists and Cartesians foster a picture of humans as isolated egos shacked up in bodies, and separated forever from the world around them. In technical terms, this means that an important human characteristic, concern for others, is an extrinsic part of our identity: it needs (self-interested) reasons to activate it.

This picture has been taken up with enthusiasm by many financial economists, and on another occasion perhaps we will discuss how their doing so has played a causal role in the current financial crisis. Meanwhile, let us consider an alternative view, one that Norton's acting brings to mind.

Pragmatists, taking their cue from William James and John Dewey, view humans as creatures that are initimately connected to everything else. Even their consciousness is best described as saturated with the world rather than separate from it.

We are, in short, embedded beings. And for us, seeing embraces our world. It is so much more than just a visual experience

Okay, but let's get back to movies. Maybe I should issue a warning. This has now probably ruined a lot of performances for me. It is much more obvious that many actors are not seeing what they are looking at, and that this is distorting their whole relationship to the objects/people in question. They stumble around, so out of synch with everything that they might as well be blind. The worst cases, as to be expected, are the high tech movies where the actors are not even confronted in the studio by anything like what they are supposed to be seeing (typically a monster, explosion, alien, and so on).

Perhaps we should be a bit concerned about this. Perhaps by watching so many people who are unable to see, we will eventually become blind and out of synch ourselves.

This blog is heavily in debt

Really it's a bit much. I bang on about the moral dimension of the current financial crisis all the while handing out I.O.U.s, and yet never seeming to get around to pay back time. As I recall, I promised to say why philosophers pretend to be so boring, elaborate on the virtues of pragmatism, finish the deviancy tale, and still more. Well here's a special one-off payment by way of penance: I have just finished writing a book on Pragmatism and anyone who wants to road test it before it goes to print can have a free draft via e-mail. Just send me your address. If you give me feedback, I will also send you a free copy of the actual book when it comes out. Meanwhile, I must remember to tell you about intellectual package tours soon. I will do that. Soon. I promise.