How did Sauron do it...
teepee
Tolkien had given much thought to how it worked. I like to think he did.
How did Sauron bind all the other rings to the One Ring? I can understand
how he did with those he had a hand in making, but he also did so with the
Three, which he had no hand in. And how did he contrive that the Three lost
their power when the One died? And why did the destruction of the One
destroy Sauron. Fourthly how is it that Sauron can use his power and yet not
dissipate it as Morgoth did?
I was trying to imagine how it might be so, and obviously some of it is a
bit speculative to say the least, though I think there's hints and
statements that support most if the thesis scattered through the books. SO
some of what follows is me, and some is fairly established.
The One plainly contains great power, power which Sauron can commune with
somewhat whether the ring was on his finger or not. It's as though Sauron
had placed the larger part of himself in a higher realm where it could reach
where it needed to, whether it be the mind of an Orc or the bricks of the
Dark Tower or back to the Dark Lord. But this realm is itself a power
source, ensuring that the power that was transmitted through a ring does not
ever dissipate so long as it has access to that realm. Thus neither Lorien,
Rivendell nor Mordor are ever subject to the dissipations of time. This
realm, one might assume, is the same realm that Frodo and the mortal Nazgul
see and inhabit.
The One, it seems to me, had been placed at the Gateway of this realm. Once
placed thus, no other power could go in or come out of that realm except via
it. In order to achieve this, Sauron placed so much of his power into the
One in order to achieve this that it essentially was him. Only (most of) his
consciousness remained in the physical world. The consciousness was able to
draw on the power of the ring, albiet imperfectly, because of this
communion, even if he didn't possess it, unless another diverted that power
to themselves. Those who held the other rings were also drawn into this
realm in order to commune with the power of that realm via their rings. But
because that power went via the gateway where the One sat, whoever held the
One could sense the thoughts and deeds of the other ring holders,and even
control them.
When the One was destroyed a number of things happened. Sauron died, because
he was the One. All that was left behind was his utterly powerless
consciousness to gnaw the shadows. His constructions that were magical in
nature and relied on the One for architectural solidity all collapsed.
Others which he possessed but did not build, such as Minas Morgul, did not.
Secondly the gateway collapsed. Elrond and Galadriel could therefore no
longer draw on the ever renewing power of the higher realm. But because they
had not built their realms on magic, merely used it to preserve and glorify,
their homes did not perish immediately, but ran out of steam and faded into
normalacy over a period of years. The Nazgul had long been drawn into that
other realm body and soul, so when the gateway collapsed, they were trapped
there forever. Likewise those parts of Frodo and Bilbo's souls that had been
drawn into that realm were lost to them.
A number of questions arise. Most important, why did Sauron think the ring
had been used by Aragorn. Surely he would have felt such a use instantly, or
was his commune withthe ring much less perfect than we might suppose.
Secondly, how did Sauron control the Nazgul without holding the One? He must
have included some additional controls in those rings that were not in the
Three? Or had he corrupted them so much while he held the One that he could
still control them while not wearing it.
Thirdly, how did this gateway get opened in the first place? It seems a bit
odd that Celebrimbor could do such a thing on his own. And why then could
Saruman not open it. Would he not have had access to the wisdom of both Aule
and Celebrimbor back in Valinor, who could have told him how to do it. Was
there but one gateway possible? One feels there must have been another such
gateway in Valinor, which is why Frodo needed to go there to find healing,
and why all the High Elves left Middle Earth when the One perished.
Finally, could Gandalf have used his ring to find the One many years earlier
if he chose if he'd known, given that he might have been able to sense its
holder's mind? Would Saruman have done such a thing had he been given an
Elven ring, since his ringlore was great? Why did Saruman not therefore bend
his efforts to getting a ring? Why did he not take Gandalf's when he
captured him, since we know Saruman suspected him of possessing it? Would
have been easier than dredging rivers.
Just stuff I think about now and again. Probably not worth the paper it's
not written on.
Stan Brown
You raise some interesting points, much of which I've snipped. I have
comments on a few selections:
> Likewise those parts of Frodo and Bilbo's souls that had been
> drawn into that realm were lost to them.
I am not at all sure about that. As far as I can recall, Frodo seemed
to be completely healed spiritually. After the Ring went into the
fire, we read, "there was Frodo, pale and worn, and yet himself
again; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will,
nor madness, nor any fear. His burden was taken away. There was the
dear master of the sweet days in the Shire." I can recall at Frodo
had periodic bouts of sickness and pain on the anniversaries of his
ordeals, but as far as I can recall he was spiritually whole again.
Am I missing something?
> Secondly, how did Sauron control the Nazgul without holding the
> One?
He controlled them because he had their Nine Rings. I cite some
references in
http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm#Q79-SauronHeld
> Thirdly, how did this gateway get opened in the first place? It
> seems a bit odd that Celebrimbor could do such a thing on his own.
Celebrimbor didn't make the Three on his own till after he'd made the
Nine and the Seven under Sauron's guidance. He used that knowledge to
make the Three. Whether the One operated as a gateway or there was a
different mechanism, Celebrimbor used what he had learned from
Sauron, so the Three were under the control of the One.
> Would he not have had
> access to the wisdom of both Aule and Celebrimbor back in Valinor,
> who could have told him how to do it.
Remember that this was black magic. Aulė would certainly not have
helped. For that matter, when Saruman was in Valinor, he would not
have wanted to acquire that power. He gradually went bad when in
Middle-earth.
As for Celebrimbor, he was born in Middle-earth, wasn't he? So he
would have been in Mandos, not Valinor, when he had knowledge of
Ring-making. And we can be pretty sure that he would know the folly
and danger of trying to recover that knowledge, so he also would not
have helped Curunir, even if Curunir had one to Mandos to speak with
him (which I think unlikely).
> Finally, could Gandalf have used his ring to find the One many
> years earlier if he chose if he'd known, given that he might have
> been able to sense its holder's mind?
Well, maybe, but it's a moot point. If I remember the sequence of
events correctly, Gandalf didn't first know that the One had been
found and then eventually figure out that Bilbo had it. Rather, like
all the Wise he thought it was still lost (though it would eventually
be found). He knew Bilbo had a small-r ring the same year Bilbo found
it --even if Bilbo had said nothing he would have hard it from the
Dwarves. Then as Gandalf observed Bilbo over the years he gradually
came to realize that Bilbo's ring was the One Ring, and *that* told
him that the One had been found.
> Why did [Saruman] not take Gandalf's when he captured him, since we
> know Saruman suspected him of possessing it? Would have been easier
> than dredging rivers.
This is addressed (not resolved) in
http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm#Q3-Saruman
You might have something to add.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
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Bill O'Meally
> I am not at all sure about that. As far as I can recall, Frodo seemed
> to be completely healed spiritually.
At first he did. But I wouldn't say he was *completely* healed. He bore
the scars of carrying the Ring even after it was destroyed, and his
disquiet continued to grow.
I see what you are trying to say as far as what the OP was asking. Bilbo
did not surrender to the Ring, but was nevertheless scarred from his
time in posessing it. Frodo did not succumb to it until the very end of
his endurance, but for very different reasons as did the Men who became
the Nazgul. As a result he seemes to have been more damaged than Bilbo
was. Neither had "lost their souls" in the end as the Nazgul did.
After the Ring went into the
> fire, we read, "there was Frodo, pale and worn, and yet himself
> again; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will,
> nor madness, nor any fear. His burden was taken away. There was the
> dear master of the sweet days in the Shire." I can recall at Frodo
> had periodic bouts of sickness and pain on the anniversaries of his
> ordeals, but as far as I can recall he was spiritually whole again.
> Am I missing something?
_Letter_ #246 (my favorite!) offers a lot of insight as to Frodo's
'wholeness' after the Ring's destruction. I'll just provide a few
quotes:
"He appears at first to have had no sense of guilt...; he was restored
to *sanity* and peace. But then he thought he had given his life in
sacrifice: he expected to die very soon. But he did not, and one can
observe the disquiet growing in him. Arwen was the first to observe the
signs, and gave him her jewel for comfort, and thought of a way of
healing him." p327
"... it was not only nightmarish memories of past horrors that afflicted
him, but also unreasoning self-reporoach: he saw himself and all that he
done as a broken failure." p328
Add to this, "... he was tempted to regret its [the Ring's] destruction,
and still to desire it". p328
Hence, his need to pass into the West for healing, a purgatory as well
as a reward.
--
Bill
"Wise fool"
Gandalf _The Two Towers_
(The wise will remove "se" to reach me. The foolish will not!)
Sean
> When the One was destroyed a number of things happened. Sauron died
This might not be the right term. Sauron had already lost
his bodily form in the wreck of Numemor -- and yet apparently
he still had fingers, if Isildur could amputate one.
Also it seems he occupied a position in space (Dol Guldur, then
Barad-dur).
> Secondly, how did Sauron control the Nazgul without holding the One?
The Great Rings were dangerous for mortals.
> Why did Saruman not... take Gandalf's when he
> captured him, since we know Saruman suspected him of possessing it?
Saruman knew that if he tried, Gandalf would set his hair on fire.
Sean_Q_
Derek Broughton
> Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:47:18 +0100 from teepee <nom...@nomail.com>:
>
> You raise some interesting points, much of which I've snipped. I have
> comments on a few selections:
>
>> Likewise those parts of Frodo and Bilbo's souls that had been
>> drawn into that realm were lost to them.
>
> I am not at all sure about that. As far as I can recall, Frodo seemed
> to be completely healed spiritually. After the Ring went into the
> fire, we read, "there was Frodo, pale and worn, and yet himself
> again; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will,
> nor madness, nor any fear. His burden was taken away. There was the
> dear master of the sweet days in the Shire." I can recall at Frodo
> had periodic bouts of sickness and pain on the anniversaries of his
> ordeals, but as far as I can recall he was spiritually whole again.
> Am I missing something?
>
I think so. I don't recall the actual speech Frodo gave Sam when he took
the boat from the Grey Havens, but he didn't sound spiritually healed to
me.
--
derek
Troels Forchhammer
<no....@no.spam> spoke these staves:
>
> teepee wrote:
>>
>> When the One was destroyed a number of things happened. Sauron
>> died
>
> This might not be the right term. Sauron had already lost
> his bodily form in the wreck of Numemor -- and yet apparently
> he still had fingers, if Isildur could amputate one.
I guess one could say that Sauron 'died' in the same sense as the
Elves did, but unlike them Sauron was able to rebuild his bodily form
and did so several times.
Early on he was capable of changing it at will -- thus he assumed the
form of the giant wolf when fighting Huan and the fair form of
Annatar when seducing the Elvensmiths of Eregion.
After the Drowning he lost his ability to assume a 'fair form', but
though that particular body was killed (and hence lost -- probably
with a loss of the associated innate 'energy'), he could rebuild a
body in a few years when he returned to Mordor.
When Isildur cut the Master Ring from his hand at the end of the
Second Age, the same thing happened again, and he lost that body.
This time, however, it took him much longer to rebuild a new body (it
is not entirely clear when he had fully 'taken shape' again, but he
definitely had a physical body when Gollum was captured). Some of the
factors known or believed to contribute to this lengthened time are
the further loss of innate energy from loosing a second[1] body, and
the absence of the One Ring, which meant that there were enhancements
he missed, though he could still access that part of his own power
that he had externalized in the Ring). Possibly other factors played
a role (perhaps he felt that it would have encumbered him needlessly
to rebuild a body too early in the Third Age?), but most likely the
two former reasons are the most important.
[1] In some texts (e.g. the Ósanwe-kenta) Tolkien also states that
Sauron's bodily form was killed (or destroyed, if you will) when
he was defeated by Lúthien and Huan, but this is not the way it's
told in /The Silmarillion/. Has anyone made a thorough study of
how Tolkien described this incident over time -- to see if it is
a matter of early vs. late views?
> Also it seems he occupied a position in space (Dol Guldur, then
> Barad-dur).
At least one of the times when Gandalf went to Dol Guldur, Sauron had
not yet assumed a physical form, but his spirit-form was also
localized and could flee from Dul Guldur (giving rise to the long
peace).
>> Secondly, how did Sauron control the Nazgul without holding the
>> One?
>
> The Great Rings were dangerous for mortals.
Again I think that we have to say that we cannot, ultimately, know
for sure.
It seems that the Nine Rings to which the Nazgûl were enslaved were,
at the time of the War of the Ring, in Sauron's physical possession,
and that he could exert some influence over them through those (this
is particularly clear in "The Hunt for the Ring" from UT and the RC).
It is, however, not clear when he gathered these Rings to himself,
and if he hadn't gathered them before the end of the Second Age, how,
then, did he control the Ringwraiths enough to get their Ring out of
them?
>> Why did Saruman not... take Gandalf's when he captured him, since
>> we know Saruman suspected him of possessing it?
>
> Saruman knew that if he tried, Gandalf would set his hair on fire.
;-)
I think that there are several possible reasons, and that it's quite
likely to have been a combination. Listing the first that come to
mind:
1) Saruman wasn't yet fully bad and he quailed at this act -- wanting
to postpone it as long as possible. (Saruman having second
thoughts is suggested in one version of "The Hunt for the Ring" in
UT.)
2) Saruman knew that it would take him a lot of time to get the Ring
(the Three were, themselves, invisible, though they didn't confer
invisibility upon their wearers). Holding Gandalf for a few months
would, he may have hoped, speed up the part of the process that
would need his personal attention.
3) Saruman still hoped to be able to persuade Gandalf to work for him
and therefore didn't want to alienate Gandalf more than he already
had.
4) Saruman didn't dare to hold or use one of the Rings that were
subject to the One -- should Sauron regain the Master Ring,
Saruman's mind would lay open to Sauron . . .
5) Saruman didn't really care for one of the unsullied Rings -- he
wouldn't be able to turn them to his own purposes anyway.
I'm sure that other arguments can be imagined -- but I think this
suffices to show that it doesn't have to be an unreasonable idea.
Of course there is also the whole issue of literary necessity -- not
to mention the question of whether Gandalf's Ring (in the sense of
the special status a keeper of one of the Three) was envisioned when
Tolkien wrote about Gandalf's capture.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot ++
- /Hogfather/ (Terry Pratchett)
teepee
"Stan Brown" <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote
>
> I am not at all sure about that. As far as I can recall, Frodo seemed
> to be completely healed spiritually. After the Ring went into the
> fire, we read, "there was Frodo, pale and worn, and yet himself
> again; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will,
> nor madness, nor any fear. His burden was taken away. There was the
> dear master of the sweet days in the Shire." I can recall at Frodo
> had periodic bouts of sickness and pain on the anniversaries of his
> ordeals, but as far as I can recall he was spiritually whole again.
> Am I missing something?
What I think is significant is that his bouts of sickness were associated
with emoies of the stabbing with the Morgul Knife. Which as we know, was
made only to draw its victims into the realm of the rings. And note Frodo's
words - "I am wounded....it will never really heal." And later at the
Havens, the emphasis to Sam "You cannot always be torn in two...but I have
been too deeply hurt."
>> Why did [Saruman] not take Gandalf's when he captured him, since we
>> know Saruman suspected him of possessing it? Would have been easier
>> than dredging rivers.
>
> This is addressed (not resolved) in
> http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm#Q3-Saruman
> You might have something to add.
Ineteresting but I would favour a much simpler explanation. Saruman thought
the One had been recovered. Putting on one of the Three would have revealed
his thoughts and plans to whoever had it. Having been caught out by the
Palantir already, Saruman would have been doubly wary of such things. And he
might have thought that trapping Gandalf thus but leaving on his ring would
attract the attention of the Ring Bearer (as indeed it did - Frodo saw him
in a dream) and cause him to reveal himself. The ring Saruman himself wore
might have been part of some abortive scheme in this regard - perhaps it
would have alerted him to traffic between Narya and the One in some fashion.
teepee
"Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote
>>
>> This might not be the right term. Sauron had already lost
>> his bodily form in the wreck of Numemor -- and yet apparently
>> he still had fingers, if Isildur could amputate one.
>
> I guess one could say that Sauron 'died' in the same sense as the
> Elves did, but unlike them Sauron was able to rebuild his bodily form
> and did so several times.
I think Sauron was different from other Maiar once he forged the ring. It's
clear that even Morgoth suffered from the disappation of his power over the
ages. Thanks to the One, Sauron remained as strong as ever despite his many
defeats. I believe this was because he was able to put his essential self
inside the One and project it into a dimension where he was ever renewed in
power. Destroying his physical form did not harm his essential self within
the Ring, whereas, conversely, destroying the Ring certainly destroyed his
physical form.
In a sense the idea that Sauon did not appear in the book in person is
wrong. Frodo carried him around his neck.
Glenn Holliday
> In message <news:kh%Li.29960$x%6.5499@pd7urf2no> Sean
> <no....@no.spam> spoke these staves:
>> teepee wrote:
>>> Why did Saruman not... take Gandalf's when he captured him, since
>>> we know Saruman suspected him of possessing it?
>> Saruman knew that if he tried, Gandalf would set his hair on fire.
>
> likely to have been a combination. Listing the first that come to
> mind:
> I'm sure that other arguments can be imagined -- but I think this
> suffices to show that it doesn't have to be an unreasonable idea.
>
useful to Saruman, so he may not have desired to possess them.
(Though he was still studying Ringlore, and one of the Three would
have been a very interesting example to study.)
But I've always thought he would have wanted to deny its use to
Gandalf. I can only think he was not able to immediately take it
from Gandalf by force, which you hinted it. As the Wicked Witch
of the West said, these things take time, and must be done
delicately.
--
Glenn Holliday holl...@acm.org
Bill O'Meally
And why
> did the destruction of the One destroy Sauron.
Unlike Morgoth, who disseminated his power into more or less all matter,
Sauron put all his eggs in one basket, *concentrating* most of his
native power into the Ring. Destroying the Ring was nigh fatal to
Sauron. To use the same MO to destroy Morgoth (at least without
destroying Arda) would have been impossible. "The whole of
'Middle-earth' was Morgoth's Ring". (MR p400)
Fourthly how is it
> that Sauron can use his power and yet not dissipate it as Morgoth did?
Not sure what you're asking here. Sauron and Morgoth had different
goals, therefore different MOs. As stated, Sauron concentrated his power
in a sort of all-or-nothing gamble, though he had enough hubris to feel
that this was a sure bet. Never did he consider that he might actually
lose the Ring, much less that it might be destroyed! Sauron was only
interested in creating order by dominating the *creatures* of
Middle-earth. Morgoth wanted control of *all matter*. To do so, he had
to disseminate a major part of his native power into, well, *everything*
and that's a tall order. The so called "Morgoth Element" is the stuff of
Arda Marred. Doing this was to a major detriment to his *personal*
power, but not to his *total* power. Tolkien at times used the term "The
Morgoth", which is the collective power of Melkor plus his minions. "The
Morgoth" contained the complete power that was inherent in the primeval
Melkor, which was formidable. However, if his armies could be defeated
piecemeal, or if Melkor could be separated from that element of his
power he was considerably weaker.
<snip>
> When the One was destroyed a number of things happened. Sauron died,
> because he was the One.
Careful. I think you are making a leap by saying that Sauron *was* the
Ring. I don't think Tolkien ever implied that. The Ring did not have
conscousness. It was not a being in and of itself. Sauron was.
All that was left behind was his utterly
> powerless consciousness to gnaw the shadows.
His spirit had fallen so low that its recovering again as it had in the
past seemed unlikely. In his later writings, Tolkien seemed to think a
lot about redemption (See 'Myths Transformed'). In writing about
Morgoth's and Sauron's falls, he discusses that the wicked spirit
becomes fixed in its ambitions which are now well beyond what it is
capable of achieving -- Morgoth because he was thrust out into the Void
with no contact with matter in which his power dwelt, and Sauron because
the greater part of his primeval power was destroyed with the Ring. In
striving for this now unattainable desire, the spirit does not tend to
itself, maintaining a state of impotency. It is only through repentence
and redemption that the spirit can lift itself out of that state of
impotency. (Well, Tolkien *was* a devout Catholic. :-))
<snip>
Sean
> The Ring did not have conscousness.
But it seemed to have qualities associated with consciousness;
a will, a sense of purpose; an objective to be achieved; even
(in a limited way) the means to attain it:
"A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off
treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it... The Ring
was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from
Isildur's hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came
it caught poor Deagol, and he was murdered; and after that
Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use
of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed
with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now,
when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark
thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum."
Sean_Q_
Dirk Thierbach
> "Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote
>> I guess one could say that Sauron 'died' in the same sense as the
>> Elves did, but unlike them Sauron was able to rebuild his bodily form
>> and did so several times.
> I think Sauron was different from other Maiar once he forged the ring.
Why should he be? None of the "children" of Eru is able to change their
own nature. Eru alone could do that.
> It's clear that even Morgoth suffered from the disappation of his
> power over the ages.
Morgoth didn't "suffer" from it, he voluntarily dissipated his "power"
(or will, or substance, or whatever you like to call it) into all of
Arda, to taint it and so to create "Arda Marred".
Sauron, OTOH, "externalized" a substantial part of himself into the
Ring. (BTW, this is a common fairy-tale topic). This part of his "power"
was safe (as long as the Ring existed), and he could still use it.
But other parts of his "power" (namely those he used to built his
physical body) were not. They were used up every time his body was
destroyed.
> Thanks to the One, Sauron remained as strong as ever despite his many
> defeats.
No, he didn't. After each destruction of his body, Sauron is first
reduced to a mere "shadow" of himself. He can, more and more slowly
after each desctruction, rebuild himself, but some things are lost --
for example his ability to take on a "fair" shape is gone after his
first destruction.
> I believe this was because he was able to put his essential self
> inside the One
If you replace "essential" with "substantial part", then yes, this
is exactly what happens. In this way, it is *protected* from destruction.
But not renewed.
> and project it into a dimension
Why do you have to introduce vague ideas like "another dimension"?
It's enough to know that he put part of himself into the Ring. We don't
know *how* he did it, so any speculation about "extra dimensions" is
pretty futile.
> where he was ever renewed in power.
Again, why do you have to make this assumption? There's no need to
have his power renewed; it's enough if we assume it is protected
and *constant*.
> Destroying his physical form did not harm his essential self within
> the Ring,
Reformulation: Destroying his physical form only did harm that part of
his power he spent to build this physical form. It didn't harm the
rest of him (as the rest of Gandalf wasn't harmed when his physical
form was destroyed by the Balrog), and of course it didn't harm that
part that was externalized in the Ring.
> whereas, conversely, destroying the Ring certainly destroyed his
> physical form.
Reformulation: Destroying the Ring destroyed so much of Sauron's
power that not enough would be left to even sustain his physical form
(because he needed that little that was left to survive at all).
Or, as letter #131 puts it:
There was another weakness: if the One Ring was actually unmade,
annihilated, then its power would be dissolved, Sauron's own being
would be diminished to vanishing point, and he would be reduced to a
shadow, a mere memory of malicious will.
> In a sense the idea that Sauon did not appear in the book in person is
> wrong. Frodo carried him around his neck.
No, Frodo carried a substantial part of Saurons power around his neck
(which is what gave the Ring some sort of consciousness of his own).
The Ring certainly wasn't Sauron himself (i.e., his central personality).
Otherwise Sauron would have known that Frodo was carrying it right into
Mordor.
- Dirk
Stan Brown
> I think Sauron was different from other Maiar once he forged the ring. It's
> clear that even Morgoth suffered from the disappation of his power over the
> ages.
It was not the passage of time that diminished Morgoth's powers.
Rather, he deliberately expended his power in infiltrating all the
matter of Arda.
The other Valar and Maiar did not lose power over time.
Sauron did not just lose power, he gained it, largely thanks to the
Ring.
Bill O'Meally
> Bill O'Meally wrote:
>
>> The Ring did not have conscousness.
>
> But it seemed to have qualities associated with consciousness;
> a will, a sense of purpose; an objective to be achieved; even
> (in a limited way) the means to attain it:
A magnet attracted to iron seems to have a sense of purpose as well.
Does it have intelligence?
Dirk Thierbach
> "Dirk Thierbach" <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> wrote
> <snip>
> Of course there is the standard way of reading the text. Sometimes it
> entertains to read it in other ways.
*Shrug* Of course it's entertaining to have wild ideas about
something, but if it just falls flat on its nose as soon as you start
to look a bit closer at it, then this limits the entertainment value
severely (at least for me).
I think it also makes communication easier if one marks wild speculations
clearly as such (then people like me won't be tempted to take them
seriously).
- Dirk
teepee
"Dirk Thierbach" <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> wrote
> I think it also makes communication easier if one marks wild speculations
> clearly as such (then people like me won't be tempted to take them
> seriously).
Robert J. Kolker
> The One, it seems to me, had been placed at the Gateway of this realm.
The One is a Potterian Port-Key among other things.
Bob Kolker
teepee
"teepee" <nom...@nomail.com> wrote
>> This is addressed (not resolved) in
>> http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm#Q3-Saruman
>> You might have something to add.
It also occurs that there was a crude level of communication between the
holders of the Three. Galadriel knew they fellowship was coming. She knew
Gandalf was not dead.
If Saruman had held Gandalf's ring, or taken it off Gandalf, or killed him,
he might have thought the other two would know immediately. That would have
cost him the element of suprise.
Jamie Andrews; real address @ bottom of message
on its face in some way too, but you can tell me how.
It's as if Sauron taught Celebrimbor how to make computers
and operating systems, but Sauron designed them with hidden BDs
(back doors). Sauron worked the BD into his design so cleverly
that even when Celebrimbor designed the Three, he put in the BD
unbeknownst even to him.
When Sauron made the One, it immediately accessed the BD of
all the other computers and made them zombies. The first thing
he got the zombies to do was to capture the souls of the owners
and make the owners zombies of the computers. But the holders
of the Three shut down their systems before that could happen.
He then took the Nine from the Nazgul. That way, he could
control the Nazgul without even using the One, since they were
already zombies of the Nine. He tried to do the same with the
Seven.
Sauron also designed and programmed a lot of software for
the One, and changed his business practices so that he couldn't
function normally without the One. When he lost the One, he had
to go back to paper processes.
When Gollum, then Bilbo, then Frodo got a hold of the One,
they couldn't access all the higher-level functionality of it
because the operating system was too hard to use. (Must have
been something like Unix!) They could use it for a few simple
things that any high-powered computer could be used for, but not
for controlling the Three, for making minions do their bidding,
or anything like that.
The One had reprogrammed the Three so much that their
owners couldn't take out all the hooks without crashing the
system entirely. They knew that when the One was destroyed, it
would automatically use the BD to reformat the Three's hard
drives, but they couldn't do anything about that.
So when the One was destroyed, it fried the Three, and
Sauron, distraught at the prospect of having to run a paper
office forevermore, died from sheer stress!
--Jamie. (efil4dreN)
andrews .uwo } Merge these two lines to obtain my e-mail address.
@csd .ca } (Unsolicited "bulk" e-mail costs everyone.)
teepee
"Jamie Andrews; real address @ bottom of message" <m...@privacy.net> wrote
> So when the One was destroyed, it fried the Three, and
> Sauron, distraught at the prospect of having to run a paper
> office forevermore, died from sheer stress!
Burn the blasphemer!
Dirk Thierbach
> It also occurs that there was a crude level of communication between the
> holders of the Three.
This form of communication is called "Osanwe-Kenta", and is not
connected with the Three Rings. Tolkien wrote a well-known essay about
it. It's described directly in LotR, from the point of view of an
observer looking at Celeborn, Galadriel, Elrong and Gandalf:
If any wanderer had chanced to pass, little would he have seen or heard,
and it would have seemed to him only that he saw grey figures, carved
in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. For
they did not move or speak with mouth, looking from mind to mind; and only
their shining eyes stirred and kindled as their thoughts went to and fro.
- Dirk
Stan Brown
<omea...@wise.rr.com>:
> Sean wrote:
> > Bill O'Meally wrote:
> >
> >> The Ring did not have conscousness.
> >
> > But it seemed to have qualities associated with consciousness;
> > a will, a sense of purpose; an objective to be achieved; even
> > (in a limited way) the means to attain it:
>
> A magnet attracted to iron seems to have a sense of purpose as well.
> Does it have intelligence?
You're not serious, I assume. A magnet does not seem to me to have a
sense of purpose, any more than a leaf does when it falls from a tree
to the ground.
Or have you been reading this page:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
"Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent
Falling' Theory"
Troels Forchhammer
(Jamie Andrews; real address @ bottom of message) spoke these
staves:
> Hey, I thought of a good analogy. It probably falls flat
> on its face in some way too, but you can tell me how.
<snip>
> So when the One was destroyed, it fried the Three, and
> Sauron, distraught at the prospect of having to run a paper
> office forevermore, died from sheer stress!
Heh heh! Nice one! ;-)
If I were to find an objection (as you invite to <GG>), it would be
related to the portrayal of the dependency of the Three, the Seven and
the Nine upon the One as a back-door -- it seems to me to go deeper
than that, and once Sauron had made the One these other Rings really
depended on the One; their powers could only exist while the One
lasted.
Staying in the computer system analogy, the other Rings of Power had
been hard-wired to only be able to use the power-supply from the One,
and once the One was shut down, the other Rings also shut down, because
their power-supply failed (no UPS for Elven Rings).
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
- /Hogfather/ (Terry Pratchett)
Prai Jei
<47002774$1...@newsgate.x-privat.org>:
> In quiet moments I sometimes like thinking about the One Ring, and whether
> Tolkien had given much thought to how it worked. I like to think he did.
>
> How did Sauron bind all the other rings to the One Ring? I can understand
> how he did with those he had a hand in making, but he also did so with the
> Three, which he had no hand in. And how did he contrive that the Three
> lost their power when the One died? And why did the destruction of the One
> destroy Sauron. Fourthly how is it that Sauron can use his power and yet
> not dissipate it as Morgoth did?
It all follows from the laws of quantum mechanics. Destruction of the set of
2N+1 rings immediately breaks the continuity with sets of higher
cardinality so that the set of 2N+3, 2N+5, etc. rings immediately lose
their power. It doesn't matter a who made a particular set of rings, those
rings rely on all sets of rings of lesser number (but greater power), right
down/up to the One, to be *there*.
So there must have been Five Rings somewhere, of which the histories of
Middle-earth are totally silent, otherwise the Seven and the Nine would not
have had any power. Were they made for the Ents?
Or perhaps they are still remembered in song. "On the fifth day of
Christmas..."
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Count Menelvagor
i'm reminded of one of the crackpot theories at the tolkien sarcasm
page: one OS to rule them all and in the darkness bind them!
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> If I were to find an objection (as you invite to <GG>), it would be
> related to the portrayal of the dependency of the Three, the Seven and
> the Nine upon the One as a back-door -- it seems to me to go deeper
> than that, and once Sauron had made the One these other Rings really
> depended on the One; their powers could only exist while the One
> lasted.
That's what Tolkien said on OtRoPatTA: "but secretly Sauron made One
Ring to rule all the others, and their power was bound up with it, to
be subject wholly to it and to last only so long as it too should
last."
Bill O'Meally
> Tue, 2 Oct 2007 21:49:36 -0500 from Bill O'Meally
> <omea...@wise.rr.com>:
>> Sean wrote:
>>> Bill O'Meally wrote:
>>>
>>>> The Ring did not have conscousness.
>>>
>>> But it seemed to have qualities associated with consciousness;
>>> a will, a sense of purpose; an objective to be achieved; even
>>> (in a limited way) the means to attain it:
>>
>> A magnet attracted to iron seems to have a sense of purpose as well.
>> Does it have intelligence?
>
> You're not serious, I assume. A magnet does not seem to me to have a
> sense of purpose, any more than a leaf does when it falls from a tree
> to the ground.
>
> Or have you been reading this page:
> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
> "Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent
> Falling' Theory"
--
Bill O'Meally
> You're not serious, I assume.
Sure I am. Perhaps you misunderstood my meaning.
A magnet does not seem to me to have a
> sense of purpose, any more than a leaf does when it falls from a tree
> to the ground.
The operative word was "seem". What I was getting at was that the Ring
had no more intelligence in its attraction towards Sauron than a
magnet's attraction to metal.
>
> Or have you been reading this page:
> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
> "Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent
> Falling' Theory"
No, I haven't, but 'The Onion' is always a good read. One of my home
state's better exports -- that and cheese. :-)
Sean
> The operative word was "seem". What I was getting at was that the Ring
> had no more intelligence in its attraction towards Sauron than a
> magnet's attraction to metal.
Ah, but "Magic rings are - well, magical." And the One showed
considerably more sophistication of strategy than a magnet.
Once I used to play chess against a program called Sargon.
It was extremely aggressive, and really went for the jugular.
A chess-playing friend and I used to team up to play against it.
He was constantly anthropomorphizing the program: "It's up to
something." "It's obviously planning something devious."
"It's trying to lure us into a trap," etc. But it wasn't
really a mind, it was just a rule engine.
SQ
Troels Forchhammer
"Bill O'Meally" <omea...@wise.rr.com> spoke these staves:
>
<snip>
> What I was getting at was that the Ring had no more intelligence
> in its attraction towards Sauron than a magnet's attraction to
> metal.
That is, at least, a debateable question ;-)
The One Ring may have been non-sapient, in which case the phrases that
suggest otherwise are simply antropomorphisms -- clearly that cannot be
ruled out. In that case the Ring can probably be likened to a very
clever piece of neural programming.
On the other hand, Tolkien /does/ attribute the One Ring with a will
and with desires, implying that the had a degree of sapience sufficient
for having a will and conscious desires.
I, on my part, am satisfied that the One Ring would at least have
passed the Turing test, in which case one can reasonably ask, 'does it
matter?' -- for all practical purposes the One Ring 'acts' in the book
as an individual 'character' with as much intelligence and personality
as e.g. the Witch-king.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not
imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They
laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed
at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the
Clown.
- Carl Sagan
Derek Broughton
> Stan Brown wrote:
>
>> You're not serious, I assume.
>
> Sure I am. Perhaps you misunderstood my meaning.
>
> A magnet does not seem to me to have a
>> sense of purpose, any more than a leaf does when it falls from a tree
>> to the ground.
>
> The operative word was "seem". What I was getting at was that the Ring
> had no more intelligence in its attraction towards Sauron than a
> magnet's attraction to metal.
>
I thought it was a pretty good analogy.
>> Or have you been reading this page:
>> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
>> "Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent
>> Falling' Theory"
>
> No, I haven't, but 'The Onion' is always a good read. One of my home
> state's better exports -- that and cheese. :-)
Oh please. You need to try some real cheese. I can't believe the stuff
that impresses Americans. Does the Department of Homeland Security prevent
you getting the good stuff? otoh, the Onion's a hit :-)
--
derek
Larry Swain
> In message <news:4705adf7$0$19590$4c36...@roadrunner.com>
> "Bill O'Meally" <omea...@wise.rr.com> spoke these staves:
>
>
> <snip>
>
>
>>What I was getting at was that the Ring had no more intelligence
>>in its attraction towards Sauron than a magnet's attraction to
>>metal.
>
>
> That is, at least, a debateable question ;-)
>
> The One Ring may have been non-sapient, in which case the phrases that
> suggest otherwise are simply antropomorphisms -- clearly that cannot be
> ruled out. In that case the Ring can probably be likened to a very
> clever piece of neural programming.
>
> On the other hand, Tolkien /does/ attribute the One Ring with a will
> and with desires, implying that the had a degree of sapience sufficient
> for having a will and conscious desires.
>
> I, on my part, am satisfied that the One Ring would at least have
> passed the Turing test, in which case one can reasonably ask, 'does it
> matter?' -- for all practical purposes the One Ring 'acts' in the book
> as an individual 'character' with as much intelligence and personality
> as e.g. the Witch-king.
>
My pets have desires and will and "act", is my dog sapient?
Troels Forchhammer
Larry Swain <gi...@poetic.com> spoke these staves:
>
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
<snip>
On the sapience of the One Ring
>> I, on my part, am satisfied that the One Ring would at least have
>> passed the Turing test, in which case one can reasonably ask,
>> 'does it matter?' -- for all practical purposes the One Ring
>> 'acts' in the book as an individual 'character' with as much
>> intelligence and personality as e.g. the Witch-king.
>>
>
> My pets have desires and will and "act", is my dog sapient?
But if we get to the equivalence of animals, the question is one of
degree -- it is recognized that your pets are intelligent, just not
as much as yourself (I'll leave the question of whether they can be
sapient to those who are more knowledgeable on that than I).
The question has been raised before (on more than one occasion), and
I was trying to summarize rather than argue a point. In the end I
think it depends on what you read into Tolkien's descriptions: I
cannot think of a reasonable test that can be used to decide whether
or not they are antropomorphisms (usable in context, of course -- one
that will be able to give an answer based on the known texts).
Heck, some even insist that the Ring could /speak/ (as did Túrin's
sword, the Troll's purse and probably some other inanimate objects
that I've forgotten about) ;-)
Personally I am quite happy with Stan's summary in the Rings-FAQ:
<http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm#Q1-Sentient>
My choice of the Witch-king was very deliberate -- we hear of him
that he, as well as the other Ringwraiths, 'had no will but
[Sauron's] own, being each utterly subservient to the ring that had
enslaved him, which Sauron held.' Yet the Ringwraiths are capable of
acting as independent agents carrying out Sauron's will -- but are
they intelligent? Can we think of a good test to discern between the
intelligence of the Ring (whether reality or antropomorphism) and
that of the Witch-king?
As implied above, I don't think it's possible to come up with a
definite answer, but for my own part, I believe that Tolkien did
indeed intend for the One Ring to possess some level of what we would
call 'intelligence' -- that it was self-aware (as an individual
entity separate from Sauron) and conscious of itself and of its
surroundings as being external to itself. None of this, obviously,
requires an intelligence greater that that of the more intelligent
animals.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no
basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some
farcical aquatic ceremony.
- /Monty Python and the Holy Grail/
Bill O'Meally
> A chess-playing friend and I used to team up to play against it.
> He was constantly anthropomorphizing the program: "It's up to
> something." "It's obviously planning something devious."
> "It's trying to lure us into a trap," etc. But it wasn't
> really a mind, it was just a rule engine.
Exactly my point. The Ring "seems" to have a mind of its own, but more
likely what we are seeing is the equivalent of a very complex computer
program (to continue the analogy).
Bill O'Meally
<snip>
> As implied above, I don't think it's possible to come up with a
> definite answer, but for my own part, I believe that Tolkien did
> indeed intend for the One Ring to possess some level of what we would
> call 'intelligence' -- that it was self-aware (as an individual
> entity separate from Sauron) and conscious of itself and of its
> surroundings as being external to itself. None of this, obviously,
> requires an intelligence greater that that of the more intelligent
> animals.
While its fun to speculate on such things, what you are suggesting goes
against what we know about Sauron's (or Morgoth's, or any Ainur's)
abilities. To suggest he Ring has its own intelligence, its own self
awareness -- essentially a life of its own, is to state that Sauron
created a sentient life-form. We know that he did not have this ability.
Rather he could only pervert what already existed.
One might try to compare the "Ring as a life-form" question to the
'automaton' issue, that is, beings that can only perform under the
direct control of their creator. When the creator's mind is elsewhere,
the beings flop to the ground like puppets. Such beings would include
Aule's Dwarves before Eru filled them with the Flame Imperishable.
Tolkien dabbled with Orcs being the same for a while, but abandonded
that idea as they clearly could think for themselves, or even plot
against the direct wishes of their Lord. We know that the Ring, though
full of Sauron's power and malice was not such a being. It could
function independently of Sauron's direct thought or even his presence.
For instance it worked for Isildur after Sauron's physical death during
the Last Alliance. Quite the opposite, really: Sauron relied more on the
Ring's presence than the Ring on his.
I like what you referenced elswhere from Stan's FAQ of the Rings
http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm comparing the ring's
activities to essentially an elaborate computer program. I'll quote the
particular passage:
Tim Howe [r.a.b.t article, 14 May 2002,] suggests another intriguing
"non-sentient Ring" explanation: Sauron may have programmed the Ring as
we program a computer or a robot. (Only some of what follows was in his
article.) Computer programs can be fantastically complicated and can
seem to make decisions; computer programmers even speak of a program
"deciding" to do this or that. Even so, we don't say that the computer
program (or Ring) is thinking; all the sentience lies with the
programmer (or Sauron).
Howe points out that the Ring's actions could be explained by the simple
program "slip on or off a finger at any time it will place an enemy in
peril, and abandon an owner who holds the Ring too long without using
it." Such a program would have the effect of making the Ring turn up
eventually if it were ever separated from Sauron - and as an immortal he
could afford to wait. Obviously Tolkien was not familiar with computer
programming and would not consciously have intended such an explanation,
but that doesn't mean we cannot use it as an analogy. We would think of
Sauron not as programmer but as sorcerer, making these instructions part
of the spell he cast when putting his own power into the Ring, so that
it would eventually come back to him if he ever lost it. (Against this
we must set the fact that Sauron did not seem very good at planning for
unexpected contingencies, and ask why he would plan for being separated
from the Ring when he had no reason to believe that could ever happen.)
Bill O'Meally
> I thought it was a pretty good analogy.
Thanks :-)
<snip>
>> No, I haven't, but 'The Onion' is always a good read. One of my home
>> state's better exports -- that and cheese. :-)
>
> Oh please. You need to try some real cheese. I can't believe the
> stuff that impresses Americans. Does the Department of Homeland
> Security prevent you getting the good stuff? otoh, the Onion's a hit
> :-)
Please come to Wisconsin, and I'll turn you on to some artisanal cheeses
that will knock your socks off!
Johnny1a
wrote:
> teepee <nom...@nomail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's clear that even Morgoth suffered from the disappation of his
> > power over the ages.
>
> Morgoth didn't "suffer" from it, he voluntarily dissipated his "power"
> (or will, or substance, or whatever you like to call it) into all of
> Arda, to taint it and so to create "Arda Marred".
Though it's not quite clear that he entirely understood the full
implications of what he was doing for himself, that is, I'm not sure
he realized just how _much_ this would weaken him in the individual,
specific-incarnation sense.
That would seem odd at first, but we have to assume that Morgoth was
adept both at self-deception and genuine lack of understanding, after
all, he's trying, ultimately, to rebel utterly against _God_. It
would take a very peculiar mindset to combine both Melkor's tremendous
intellect and knowledge with a lack of perception that rebeliion
against Someone possessing literally infinite power and knowledge is
futile.
I wonder sometimes if Morgoth hadn't managed to just about convince
himself, by the time of the wars of the FIrst Age and the
Silmarillion, that Eru did not exist? When he told Hurin that he made
Arda, I wonder if Morgoth _almost_ believed it, the way Smeagol on a
smaller scale almost believed his own lies about the 'birthday
present'?
>
> Sauron, OTOH, "externalized" a substantial part of himself into the
> Ring. (BTW, this is a common fairy-tale topic). This part of his "power"
> was safe (as long as the Ring existed), and he could still use it.
> But other parts of his "power" (namely those he used to built his
> physical body) were not. They were used up every time his body was
> destroyed.
>
> > Thanks to the One, Sauron remained as strong as ever despite his many
> > defeats.
>
> No, he didn't. After each destruction of his body, Sauron is first
> reduced to a mere "shadow" of himself. He can, more and more slowly
> after each desctruction, rebuild himself, but some things are lost --
> for example his ability to take on a "fair" shape is gone after his
> first destruction.
I once posited a comparison, a long time ago, between the innate
strength of an Ainu and a financial investment. My suspicion is that
the basic, innate strength of an Ainu is a little like a capitol
investment that returns interest, and as long as an Ainu is acting in
accordance with the Divine Plan, in his/her proper sphere and scale,
it's like drawing on the interest income, the money will renew itself
endlessly from interest on the original investment.
Thus an Ainu acting entirely properly might grow tired, but need only
rest for a time after his/her labors to regain his or her full,
original strength. The Valar, for ex, were said to have rested at
times after great efforts, but they alwasy regain their total power,
Manwe is no weaker today than he was at the start of the world.
Now, IMHO if an Ainu starts acting outside that 'proper' sphere and
scale, s/he has to spend more energy, drawing on the capitol to
achieve whatever end. The more malicious and rebellious the action,
the more it ends up 'costing' sooner or later.
An Ainu doing something not quite what he's supposed to be doing, but
not malicious or evil, would have to rest longer afterward to regain
full power, because the 'capitol' is smaller now and the interest from
it proportionately smaller, and the income has to first go back into
restoring the capitol before it can then be tapped to regain the
original strength.
An Ainu who falls entirely is likely to end up spending strength like
mad, faster than the income from the capitol can possibly keep up
with, and even draining the original capitol, which in turn makes it
even harder to regain the lost strength. Eventually, an Ainu acting
against Eru's Will might end up draining himself essentially dry, like
an investor who spends all his capitol and has no money left to draw
any interest on. He's 'broke', in effect. The only place to go then
to gain more 'capitol' is Eru, and presumably that won't be granted
without some repentence.
I think that's what happened to Saruman, in effect, even more than
most of the fallen Ainur, he 'spent' so much of his native strength
and essence that there was nothing left at the end, just enough inner
strength to sustain his existence, like an Elf or a Man. The Saruman
we at the end of LOTR was reduced in effect to nothing more than a
human who didn't age, trapped in physical form and effectively
powerless. Relative to his initial status, he lost even more strength
and status than Morgoth.
The Valar are so much greater than Saruman that it's hard to imagine
one ever draining himself or herself down to that level...but I think
in theory it _could_ happen.
teepee
"Bill O'Meally" <omea...@wise.rr.com> wrote
> While its fun to speculate on such things, what you are suggesting goes
> against what we know about Sauron's (or Morgoth's, or any Ainur's)
> abilities. To suggest he Ring has its own intelligence, its own self
> awareness -- essentially a life of its own, is to state that Sauron
> created a sentient life-form. We know that he did not have this ability.
> Rather he could only pervert what already existed.
It may be that he perverted what already existed - namely himself - by
placing a portion of his consciousness in the ring.
Christopher Kreuzer
> My pets have desires and will and "act", is my dog sapient?
Have you tried asking your dog?
In a language it will understand, of course. :-)
And if you talk to your dog, you don't expect an answer, do you, but in some
cases you do expect it to respond to your tone and gestures. It's not a
black-and-white question, is it?
Christopher
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> I wonder sometimes if Morgoth hadn't managed to just about convince
> himself, by the time of the wars of the FIrst Age and the
> Silmarillion, that Eru did not exist? When he told Hurin that he made
> Arda, I wonder if Morgoth _almost_ believed it, the way Smeagol on a
> smaller scale almost believed his own lies about the 'birthday
> present'?
That's very interesting. It sounds like a convincing scenario. I'm also
reminded of Sauron building temples to Morgoth on Numenor. We know that
Sauron knew that Morgoth existed, but whether Sauron really believed that
Morgoth could come back, or whether he was just using Morgoth as a way for
him to gain more power, I'm not sure.
<snip>
> I once posited a comparison, a long time ago, between the innate
> strength of an Ainu and a financial investment. My suspicion is that
> the basic, innate strength of an Ainu is a little like a capitol
> investment that returns interest, and as long as an Ainu is acting in
> accordance with the Divine Plan, in his/her proper sphere and scale,
> it's like drawing on the interest income, the money will renew itself
> endlessly from interest on the original investment.
I think a direct comparison with energy and entropy works better. I think
the way the "powers" and Elves fade into the background and become myth and
legend and how "all things beneath the Sun wear to an end at last" (at least
in Middle-earth if not in Aman), sounds a lot like entropy, with energy
becoming more and more dissapated and requiring more and more energy to
gather back up again. Though the real analogy (or the reality) should be
with myth and legend! With history and the long defeat.
And the points you make about "proper actions" are crucial. It was the evil
of melkor's actions that directly cause him to become fixed and bound into
his form. That, and the pain, I think.
Christopher
Derek Broughton
> Derek Broughton wrote:
>
>> I thought it was a pretty good analogy.
>
> Thanks :-)
>
> <snip>
>
>>> No, I haven't, but 'The Onion' is always a good read. One of my home
>>> state's better exports -- that and cheese. :-)
>>
>> Oh please. You need to try some real cheese. I can't believe the
>> stuff that impresses Americans. Does the Department of Homeland
>> Security prevent you getting the good stuff? otoh, the Onion's a hit
>> :-)
>
> Please come to Wisconsin, and I'll turn you on to some artisanal cheeses
> that will knock your socks off!
LOL. I used to live close, but it's quite a trip these days. Some day I'll
take you up on it :-)
--
derek
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> My choice of the Witch-king was very deliberate -- we hear of him
> that he, as well as the other Ringwraiths, 'had no will but
> [Sauron's] own, being each utterly subservient to the ring that had
> enslaved him, which Sauron held.' Yet the Ringwraiths are capable of
> acting as independent agents carrying out Sauron's will -- but are
> they intelligent?
In my opinion, "no will but Sauron's own" doesn't necessarily make
him a robot. For instance, IIRC, in "The Hunt for the Ring" Tolkien
talks about him deciding things and disposing his forces this way or
that.
I've never doubted that all the Ringwraiths had normal human
intelligence. I think the "no will but Sauron's own" means that they
are incapable of acting against Sauron's interests or disobeying any
orders he gives: they are slaves who will never rebel. But I don't
think that means that they lack initiative or intelligence: they are
still Men, after all.
One way to think of it, maybe, is that their Rings changed the
direction of their thinking and desires so that they now identify
their own interests with Sauron's.
Stan Brown
<omea...@wise.rr.com>:
> To suggest he Ring has its own intelligence, its own self
> awareness -- essentially a life of its own, is to state that Sauron
> created a sentient life-form. We know that he did not have this ability.
> Rather he could only pervert what already existed.
But have you forgotten, he put "a great part of his own former
power" into it. Could not some of that have been his will?
I don't believe the Ring had self awareness, but animals can perform
quite complex tasks without having self awareness.
Troels Forchhammer
>
<snip>
> While its fun to speculate on such things, what you are suggesting
> goes against what we know about Sauron's (or Morgoth's, or any
> Ainur's) abilities.
I don't agree that this is the case here. The objection, IMO, applies
only to the Flame Imperishable, or to the possession of a soul (the
two may be essentially equivalent for living creatures), but I don't
think this necessarily applies in this case, as I don't suggest that
the Ring possessed either (other than if Sauron installed some part
of his own Flame/Soul in the Ring; something I would consider highly
doubtful, though I might be persuaded otherwise), and neither Soul or
Flame is, IMO, prerequisite for the level of intelligence and
independence that I suggest.
> To suggest he Ring has its own intelligence, its own self
> awareness -- essentially a life of its own, is to state that
> Sauron created a sentient life-form. We know that he did not
> have this ability. Rather he could only pervert what already
> existed.
I agree. In this case it would rely on the part of himself that he
put in the One Ring (this is also related to the differences between
the Rings -- the Three, for instance, are never attributed with the
same antropomorphic qualities as is the Master Ring).
We are dealing with various related, but still different, concepts
here, and 'intelligence' og 'sapience' as such does not, IMO, imply
the possession of a soul (as is also clear from Tolkien's various
discussions of the case of the Orcs). I would say that the Soul /
Flame is necessary for the possession of Free Will (I've posted in
length about that), by which I also imply that I don't think that the
Ring had, in Tolkien's sense, Free Will (the Ring itself was not
morally responsible of what it did -- those whom it corrupted were,
themselves, responsible; in that sense the Ring was very much a
Boethian concept).
<snip>
I essentially agree with everything else you say -- though obviously
from a different perspective ;-)
The Ring's 'intelligence' as clever AI 'programming' is an attractive
alternative, and to some extent I think that what I suggest is the
supernatural equivalent of a very advanced program -- but I'm putting
it in the allegorical language of the fairy story rather than in the
literal language of modern science or materialism.
My claim is that the Ring, within the story, has a role as an
individual 'character' that is at least as great (and independent) as
that of the Nazgūl, and in terms of understanding its role in the
story, it probably makes better sense to think of it as such (with
the above proviso regarding Free Will) and to use the same language
about the One Ring as we would about e.g. the Witch-king.
I think we would need to imagine an adaptive neural programming that
is way beyond the current state-of-the-art in order to describe the
apparent sapience of the One Ring (we might try to imagine the state-
of-the-art in a couple of centuries with fully developed quantum
computing), but on the other hand I don't think you need to worry
about the Ring being capable of adapting to contingencies Sauron had
/not/ imagined.
Lending the Ring the certain ability to communicate wouldn't change
it's level of sapience (as is demonstrated already by current
computers), but imagining this will allow us a
'gedankenexperiment' -- doing the Turing test with the Witch-king and
the One Ring. Would the human judge be able to tell which is which?
And if not, does the difference really matter?
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does
knowledge.
- Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)
Troels Forchhammer
Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> spoke these staves:
>
<sni>
> I've never doubted that all the Ringwraiths had normal human
> intelligence.
Neither have I, of course.
> I think the "no will but Sauron's own" means that they are
> incapable of acting against Sauron's interests or disobeying
> any orders he gives: they are slaves who will never rebel.
> But I don't think that means that they lack initiative or
> intelligence: they are still Men, after all.
We can always discuss the level of Free Will possessed by the
Ringwraiths (surely theirs was not fully free), but my main point
was to the difference between the Ringwraiths and the One Ring. In
some ways it would seem almost as if the One Ring had greater
freedom of will than the Ringwraiths, though I don't actually think
that to be the case (see also my respons to Bill).
In letter #246 Tolkien wrote about a direct confrontation, 'self to
self' between Gandalf with the One Ring and Sauron without it,
It would be a delicate balance. On one side the true,
allegiance of the Ring to Sauron; on the other superior,
strength because Sauron was not actually in possession,
and perhaps also because he was weakened by long
corruption and expenditure of will in dominating inferiors.
[Letters #246, to Mrs Eileen Elgar (drafts), September 1963]
<http://google.vg/groups?selm=LgaHb.66282$aT....@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
<http://tinyurl.com/2uz3f>/
Here the One Ring is not only attributed with allegiance as a
conventional antropomophism, but the workings of this allegiance is
also described in more details and it seems to follow the human
concept of allegiance quite closely. Again I might ask in what way
this allegiance of the Master Ring differs, in an observable manner,
from the (also enforced) allegiance of the Ringwraiths? I don't
doubt that there are differences -- the Ringwraiths, as you
correctly point out, were, after all, Men, but I am asking not for
philosophical differences, but for differences that can be observed
from the text.
My point about questioning (in what was intended as a rhetorical
question) the possession of the Ringwraiths was similar -- to ask in
what ways their intelligence can be seen from the text of LotR alone
(i.e. disregarding in particular the Silm and other posthumously
published writings) to differ from the purported intelligence of the
One Ring.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
Troels Forchhammer
<snip>
> That's what Tolkien said on OtRoPatTA:
It took me a bit to realize that you referred to 'On the Rings of Power
and the Third Age' -- my fault, of course ;-)
Thanks for dragging out the quotation -- it's nice to know that I
didn't pick this one at least out of the blue ;-)
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Thus, the future of the universe is not completely
determined by the laws of science, and its present state,
as Laplace thought. God still has a few tricks up his
sleeve.
- Stephen Hawking
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> Again I might ask in what way
> this allegiance of the Master Ring differs, in an observable manner,
> from the (also enforced) allegiance of the Ringwraiths? I don't
> doubt that there are differences -- the Ringwraiths, as you
> correctly point out, were, after all, Men, but I am asking not for
> philosophical differences, but for differences that can be observed
> from the text.
I should say it's obvious from the text. The Ring could not get to
Sauron on its own, could not even keep itself out of the hands of
Sauron's enemies. A Nazgūl would have taken the Ring straight to
Sauron, we are told.
But by asking how the _allegiance_ differs, I think you are focusing
far too narrowly. Can you compare the allegiance of a dog to its
human to the allegiance of one human for another? I think not,
because a dog is a different kind of creature from a human. And a
Ring is far more different from a human than a dog is.
I think the real issue is not how the allegiance differs but how the
actions differ. And here the differences are enormous. The
Ringwraiths made plans, enlisted confederates, traveled about
purposefully, and so forth. The Ring could not choose its master; its
actions were limited to slipping off a finger, with no ability to
plan or judge the likely outcome..
Larry Swain
> In message <news:SeudnROUfOAaqpva...@rcn.net>
> Larry Swain <gi...@poetic.com> spoke these staves:
>
>>Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
>
> <snip>
>
>
> On the sapience of the One Ring
>
>
>>>I, on my part, am satisfied that the One Ring would at least have
>>>passed the Turing test, in which case one can reasonably ask,
>>>'does it matter?' -- for all practical purposes the One Ring
>>>'acts' in the book as an individual 'character' with as much
>>>intelligence and personality as e.g. the Witch-king.
>>>
>>
>>My pets have desires and will and "act", is my dog sapient?
>
>
> But if we get to the equivalence of animals, the question is one of
> degree -- it is recognized that your pets are intelligent, just not
> as much as yourself (I'll leave the question of whether they can be
> sapient to those who are more knowledgeable on that than I).
>
> The question has been raised before (on more than one occasion), and
> I was trying to summarize rather than argue a point.
I realize that, and since you and I have participated in this very
discussion more than once you're aware of my position that ascriptions
of intelligence, sapience, and will to the Ring are overreading.
In the end I
> think it depends on what you read into Tolkien's descriptions: I
> cannot think of a reasonable test that can be used to decide whether
> or not they are antropomorphisms (usable in context, of course -- one
> that will be able to give an answer based on the known texts).
>
> Heck, some even insist that the Ring could /speak/ (as did Túrin's
> sword, the Troll's purse and probably some other inanimate objects
> that I've forgotten about) ;-)
Yes, been there and had that battle as well....
>
> Personally I am quite happy with Stan's summary in the Rings-FAQ:
> <http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm#Q1-Sentient>
>
> My choice of the Witch-king was very deliberate -- we hear of him
> that he, as well as the other Ringwraiths, 'had no will but
> [Sauron's] own, being each utterly subservient to the ring that had
> enslaved him, which Sauron held.' Yet the Ringwraiths are capable of
> acting as independent agents carrying out Sauron's will -- but are
> they intelligent?
Of course they are. They speak, they act on their own, the move on
their own power, they make active decisions (i. e. not simply mindlessly
responding to external forces)
Can we think of a good test to discern between the
> intelligence of the Ring (whether reality or antropomorphism) and
> that of the Witch-king?
See above.
Larry Swain
> Fri, 5 Oct 2007 19:04:00 -0500 from Bill O'Meally
> <omea...@wise.rr.com>:
>
>> To suggest he Ring has its own intelligence, its own self
>>awareness -- essentially a life of its own, is to state that Sauron
>>created a sentient life-form. We know that he did not have this ability.
>>Rather he could only pervert what already existed.
>
>
> But have you forgotten, he put "a great part of his own former
> power" into it. Could not some of that have been his will?
It could, but of course Tolkien doesn't say that.
> I don't believe the Ring had self awareness, but animals can perform
> quite complex tasks without having self awareness.
True, but that isn't sapience is it?
Larry Swain
The surface of the water in my water glass responds to my tone and
gestures too, and I would say there is even less chance of that being
sapient than my beloved Fezziwig and Oswin.
Troels Forchhammer
<snip>
>> My choice of the Witch-king was very deliberate -- we hear of him
>> that he, as well as the other Ringwraiths, 'had no will but
>> [Sauron's] own, being each utterly subservient to the ring that
>> had enslaved him, which Sauron held.' Yet the Ringwraiths are
>> capable of acting as independent agents carrying out Sauron's
>> will -- but are they intelligent?
>
> Of course they are. They speak, they act on their own, the move
> on their own power, they make active decisions (i. e. not simply
> mindlessly responding to external forces)
>
>> Can we think of a good test to discern between the intelligence
>> of the Ring (whether reality or antropomorphism) and that of the
>> Witch-king?
>
> See above.
Of your list I would only discount speech and motion by its own power
for the Ring, and I don't think any of those are meaningful in this
context. The question is not to distinguish the motor qualities
(which are, naturally, obvious), but to distinguish between their
'minds' alone (whether antropomorphic or real).
In what way can we distinguish between making 'active choices' and
'simply mindlessly responding to external forces'? We are not, after
all, privy to the Witch-king's thoughts, just as we don't know what
possible thoughts lay behind the Ring's decisions (Gandalf's word).
Can we find a find an example of a decision by the Ringwraiths that
is unarguably less reactive than what the Ring could do?
Similarly with acting on their own -- the Ringwraiths had no will but
Sauron's, so they could not be acting entirely on their own, they
would always seek to fulfill Sauron's purposes and serve his will,
just as the Ring did. What we need is the Ringwraiths demonstrably
acting with a degree of freedom that was unattainable to the Ring.
Incidentally, by your list, the trush and Róac -- and possibly the
eagles -- are 'intelligent' (in the sense we're discussing here),
while Tolkien would not allow that. But I am not suggesting that the
Ring be intelligent in manner that goes further than that of such
animals, which Tolkien contrasted to 'true "rational" creatures,
"speaking peoples",' (by which he essentially, IMO, meant creatures
with a soul) which he, by the way, asserted were 'all of human /
'humanoid' form.'
I've stated elsewhere that I don't believe the One to have had a soul
or even Free Will, and in Tolkien that would, at most, mean something
with an intelligence akin to that of Róac, the trush and similar
(it's late in Denmark and I can't come up with more examples right
now <G>) -- not what he described as 'true "rational" creatures'.
Bill O'Meally
>> That's what Tolkien said on OtRoPatTA:
>
> It took me a bit to realize that you referred to 'On the Rings of
> Power and the Third Age' -- my fault, of course ;-)
LOL! It took me a few seconds to figure it out as well. It looked to me
at first to be an Entish word. :-)
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> In what way can we distinguish between making 'active choices' and
> 'simply mindlessly responding to external forces'? We are not, after
> all, privy to the Witch-king's thoughts, just as we don't know what
> possible thoughts lay behind the Ring's decisions (Gandalf's word).
> Can we find a find an example of a decision by the Ringwraiths that
> is unarguably less reactive than what the Ring could do?
This has been asked and answered several times in this thread. I know
you've read "The Hunt for the Ring". Do you *really* think the Nazgūl
were no more intelligent than the Ring, after reading that?
I think we must be using similar words to mean wildly different
things.
Stan Brown
> Stan Brown wrote:
> > Fri, 5 Oct 2007 19:04:00 -0500 from Bill O'Meally
> > <omea...@wise.rr.com>:
> >> To suggest he Ring has its own intelligence, its own self
> >>awareness -- essentially a life of its own, is to state that Sauron
> >>created a sentient life-form. We know that he did not have this ability.
> >>Rather he could only pervert what already existed.
> >
> > But have you forgotten, he put "a great part of his own former
> > power" into it. Could not some of that have been his will?
>
> It could, but of course Tolkien doesn't say that.
No, he doesn't. And my point, which I guess I expressed poorly, is
that the Ring need not have any sense of purpose or any will to do
what Tolkien tells us it did.
> > I don't believe the Ring had self awareness, but animals can
> > perform quite complex tasks without having self awareness.
> True, but that isn't sapience is it?
I'm not sure just what "sapience" is, but this was my point -- it's
not the same as the ability to perform complex tasks.
Or, to put it another way, the Ring could do everything it's recorded
to have done and still have no more intelligence, will, self
awareness, or "sapience" than, say, an ant.
Troels Forchhammer
> <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>>
>> Again I might ask in what way this allegiance of the Master Ring
>> differs, in an observable manner, from the (also enforced)
>> allegiance of the Ringwraiths? I don't doubt that there are
>> differences
>
> I should say it's obvious from the text. The Ring could not get to
> Sauron on its own, could not even keep itself out of the hands of
> Sauron's enemies. A Nazgūl would have taken the Ring straight to
> Sauron, we are told.
>
> But by asking how the _allegiance_ differs, I think you are
> focusing far too narrowly. Can you compare the allegiance of a dog
> to its human to the allegiance of one human for another? I think
> not, because a dog is a different kind of creature from a human.
> And a Ring is far more different from a human than a dog is.
I believe you have to have that narrow a focus. We're trying to
compare the mental capabilities of Men (though, in the case of the
Ringwraiths, Men that are changed in significant ways) to the alleged
mental abilities of a ring.
This makes for some very obvious differences which nevertheless rely
only on differences in the body -- differences that relate to the
mind only through its ability to control and use the body. Thus the
Ring is not able to move (the grow/shrink ability notwithstanding),
it cannot speak (I'll forgo both Gurthang and Mount Doom in silence
here) etc. These differences, however, must be ignored when trying to
compare the mental natures and capabilities, since they are not
directly related to what goes on in the mind.
In some ways this makes the Ring's (purported) 'will' less direct
efficient than that of most others, and as such the Ring would be
less powerful in itself (its power seems to be almost exclusively
over its wearer).
Obviously that restriction makes it much more difficult, since we are
never really privy to the 'mind' of the opponents in the book. There
are some hints in 'The Hunt for the Ring' to the thoughts of the
Witch-king in particular, but with respect to the Ring we still have
only Gandalf's descriptions to go by.
> I think the real issue is not how the allegiance differs but how
> the actions differ.
Since the question is exclusively about the mental capabilities, the
actions are really irrelevant -- the actual nature of the allegiance
and the decisions made based on that allegiance is what matters.
> And here the differences are enormous.
Are they, really? (Comments here are given from the perspective of
most extensive 'antropomorphication' of the One Ring.)
> The Ringwraiths made plans,
So did, according to Gandalf, the One Ring.
> enlisted confederates,
Again, so did the Ring (Gollum).
> traveled about purposefully, and so forth.
Something the Ring did its very best to do, though its physical body
severely limited its ability.
> The Ring could not choose its master;
Neither could the Ringwraiths.
> its actions were limited to slipping off a finger,
Again, the physical abilities are completely irrelevant
> with no ability to plan
It did, actually. The whole 'The Ring was trying to get back to its
master' speech by Gandalf shows the Ring planning how to achieve that
goal. Obviously the Ring had to serve Sauron's purposes, it was
forced to do his will, but that is precisely the point of using the
Ringwraiths for comparison, because so did they.
> or judge the likely outcome..
I don't think we can really tell about that, can we? That the Ring,
after abandoning Gollum, was 'picked up by the most unlikely person
imaginable' hardly tells anything about its abilities in this
direction. The Ring suffered from the same limitations of
understanding as did its Master, but that would also apply to the
Ringwraiths (the Ring itself would of course learn of Frodo's
intentions with regards to itself long before its Master and his
servants).
I've pointed out elsewhere that I do think that there is a
significant difference in that the One Ring did not have a soul and
never had the capacity for Free Will (though the Ringwraiths, after
their wraithification, were not entirely free either). The point is
not that there was no difference, but to come up with a set of
criteria for distinguishing that are relevant (and thus doesn't list
physical abilities as distinguishing mental capability) and employs
less handwaving.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
People are self-centered
to a nauseous degree.
They will keep on about themselves
while I'm explaining me.
- Piet Hein, /The Egocentrics/
Prai Jei
<1191535671.2...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>:
> On Oct 3, 4:51 pm, "teepee" <nom...@nomail.com> wrote:
>> "Jamie Andrews; real address @ bottom of message" <m...@privacy.net>
>> wrote
>>
>> > So when the One was destroyed, it fried the Three, and
>> > Sauron, distraught at the prospect of having to run a paper
>> > office forevermore, died from sheer stress!
>>
>> Burn the blasphemer!
>
> i'm reminded of one of the crackpot theories at the tolkien sarcasm
> page: one OS to rule them all and in the darkness bind them!
You may have heard this before, but at the company I used to work for, a
crimper tool would be used to take a couple of wires and a connector, and
*bind* *them.*
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Troels Forchhammer
> <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>>
>> In what way can we distinguish between making 'active choices'
>> and 'simply mindlessly responding to external forces'? We are
>> not, after all, privy to the Witch-king's thoughts, just as we
>> don't know what possible thoughts lay behind the Ring's decisions
>> (Gandalf's word). Can we find a find an example of a decision by
>> the Ringwraiths that is unarguably less reactive than what the
>> Ring could do?
>
> This has been asked and answered several times in this thread.
No, it has /not/ been answered -- it has been stated that we can, but
nobody's actually answered /how/, and there's a significant difference.
This is hand-waving, the same technique Shippey objects so eloquently
to when used by Tolkien's literary critics.
You refer to the 'Hunt for the Ring', but while that does give us more
details about what the Ringwraiths, and the witch-king in particular,
were thinking, it nevertheless shows them as merely responding to
external forces -- apart from their bodily abilities (speech, motion
etc.) do you have any evidence that they actually did anything that was
impossible to the Ring? No handwaving, no 'it's clear the ring couldn't
. . .', but actual evidence?
> I know you've read "The Hunt for the Ring". Do you *really* think
> the Nazgūl were no more intelligent than the Ring, after reading
> that?
I've said several times that I do not believe that the Ring was
intelligent in the same sense as the Nazgūl, but this conviction is
based on ideas regarding the role of the soul in Tolkien (which I
believe to be the prerequisite for the capacity for Free Will as well).
With regards to the exercise of this intelligence, however, I lack a
quality or feature to distinguish /in kind/ between the mental capacity
of the One Ring and that of the Ringwraiths (whose exercise of Free
Will was also severely curtailed, if not completely removed even, so
they, too, lacked the main behavioural characteristic of the soul). It
is easy enough to simply say that it is obvious, and if we agree that
the Ring did not have a soul, but the Ringwraiths did, then it is to
some extent obvious, but that still involves a level of hand-waving --
making exactly the error which Shippey berates many of Tolkien's
literary critics of committing. I think that if we cannot come up with
something better, then it cannot be quite as 'obvious' as we may think.
The same goes the other way -- distinguishing between the 'advanced
computer program' model and the animal-like intelligence exhibited by
e.g. the talking animals of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Do we
have a test that we can apply to the text which will decide the issue?
I cannot come up with anything, but was hoping that some of you, more
clever than I, could help.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
It is the theory which decides what can be observed.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Christopher Kreuzer
> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> spoke these staves:
[The Ring's planning abilities]
>> with no ability to plan
>
> It did, actually. The whole 'The Ring was trying to get back to its
> master' speech by Gandalf shows the Ring planning how to achieve that
> goal. Obviously the Ring had to serve Sauron's purposes, it was
> forced to do his will, but that is precisely the point of using the
> Ringwraiths for comparison, because so did they.
I always read that as more like a mindless instinct sort of thing. Birds
migrate with the seasons, and newborn mammals instinctively suckle for milk
at their mother's teats, so you can say that the birds and the newborn
mammals are trying to do something, but it doesn't mean they are planning
it.
Let's look at the passage in full:
"There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get
back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur's hand and betrayed him;
then when a chance came it caught poor Deagol, and he was murdered; and
after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of
him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would
never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more
and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to
be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!"
(The Shadow of the Past)
I don't think that the Ring was carefully plotting ways to escape from
Isildur, or spending thousands of years wondering whether it had done the
right thing to drop off Isildur's finger and end up on the bottom of the
Anduin. Rather, I think of the Ring as only having a very limited awareness
of its suroundings. It wouldn't for instance (though this is purest
speculation), know that it was at the bottom of a river, or under a
mountain. What it _would_ be aware of it living beings, and of course
Sauron's will.
Using light as an analogy for the Ring's ability to sense living wills,
imagine an all-encompassing darkness, with only scattered lights moving
around, some coming closer, some dim, some bright, some obscured by unseen
surroundings. These lights would be living beings, with the brightest one
being Sauron's will. While under the river, or under the mountains, the Ring
would be mostly "in the dark". Also, the Ring might enter a state of, for
want of a better word, hibernation. When Sauron's "dark thought" emanated
once again from Mirkwood, it would be woken by this. Instinctively, like a
plant growing towards the light, it would seek to "move" in that direction.
An inbuilt instinct (a "program", if you like) would be triggered and it
would try to latch on to the wills around it and, merely by its very
corroding presence, change the behaviour of those living beings towards a
previously programmed end. And also to instinctively abandon its "owners" if
there is no improvement in its situation.
I wonder. Suppose the Ring _had_ been taken away from Rivendell towards the
Sea. Would it have, once again, tried to abandon its owner? Why didn't it
try and do this when the Nazgul were near. Was it unaware of them, or did
its instincts betray it into thinking that Frodo was taking it nearer to
Mordor?
Christopher
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> The surface of the water in my water glass responds to my tone and
> gestures too, and I would say there is even less chance of that being
> sapient than my beloved Fezziwig and Oswin.
And what about people on the street that move out of your way when you are
walking along the street? Are they any more intelligent than the pigeons
that fly away when you get too close? What about those metal beasts called
cars that stop when you press a button on the sidewalk? This is all just
missing the point if we don't get back to specific behaviours.
The real point, I think, is that you give your dogs interesting names! :-)
Is Fezziwig named after the Dickens' character from 'A Christmas Carol', or
is he (she?) named after the brand of beer "Old Fezziwig Ale"?
Oswin is a bit simpler, I think. I'd point to the seventh-century
Northumbrian king (also known as Saint Oswin) as your inspiration, though
confusingly there was a King Oswin in Kent as well!
Both Oswins are mentioned here:
http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/adversaries/kingdoms/650.html
I _thought_ Oswin was Old English.
I was also sure that Fezziwig wasn't! :-)
Os-win glosses as God-friend, apparently.
I assume Fezziwig is just made up and meaningless?
The closest thing I could find was 'periwig', the original word (Middle
French) from which we get the word wig.
Christopher
Bill O'Meally
> Or, to put it another way, the Ring could do everything it's recorded
> to have done and still have no more intelligence, will, self
> awareness, or "sapience" than, say, an ant.
Or a computer. The difference being one is a life form, while the other
isn't. I think that is what is being most argued here: was the Ring
"alive"?
Troels Forchhammer
>>
>> Or, to put it another way, the Ring could do everything it's
>> recorded to have done and still have no more intelligence, will,
>> self awareness, or "sapience" than, say, an ant.
>
> Or a computer. The difference being one is a life form, while the
> other isn't. I think that is what is being most argued here: was
> the Ring "alive"?
Very good!
If I take your words literally, the implication of using the
singular, 'the difference' is that this is the only significant
difference (with respect to what I will, for lack of better words,
continue to call 'the mind')? More significantly -- for me, at least
-- that we can imagine the Ring passing the Turing test?
I'd agree that the One Ring was /not/ 'alive' in any usual sense of
the word (by which I mean that it nevertheless, like the HAL 9000 in
/2001: A Space Odyssey/, has a role in the story that is equivalent
to that of a normal character).
Now, if we can agree that the One Ring was not alive, but
nevertheless possessed abilities equivalent to the mental abilities
of other, alive but soulless, non-human speaking creatures in Middle-
earth (with some special features built in by Sauron), then I think
the rest is merely a matter of choices of words.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own
image when it turns out that God hates all the same people
you do.
- Anne Lamott
Larry Swain
> Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:24:48 -0500 from Larry Swain <gi...@poetic.com>:
>
>>Stan Brown wrote:
>>
>>>Fri, 5 Oct 2007 19:04:00 -0500 from Bill O'Meally
>>><omea...@wise.rr.com>:
>>>
>>>>To suggest he Ring has its own intelligence, its own self
>>>>awareness -- essentially a life of its own, is to state that Sauron
>>>>created a sentient life-form. We know that he did not have this ability.
>>>>Rather he could only pervert what already existed.
>>>
>>>But have you forgotten, he put "a great part of his own former
>>>power" into it. Could not some of that have been his will?
>>
>>It could, but of course Tolkien doesn't say that.
>
>
> No, he doesn't. And my point, which I guess I expressed poorly, is
> that the Ring need not have any sense of purpose or any will to do
> what Tolkien tells us it did.
>
>
>>>I don't believe the Ring had self awareness, but animals can
>>>perform quite complex tasks without having self awareness.
>>
>>True, but that isn't sapience is it?
>
>
> I'm not sure just what "sapience" is, but this was my point -- it's
> not the same as the ability to perform complex tasks.
>
> Or, to put it another way, the Ring could do everything it's recorded
> to have done and still have no more intelligence, will, self
> awareness, or "sapience" than, say, an ant.
>
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> If I take your words literally, the implication of using the
> singular, 'the difference' is that this is the only significant
> difference (with respect to what I will, for lack of better words,
> continue to call 'the mind')? More significantly -- for me, at least
> -- that we can imagine the Ring passing the Turing test?
That's a false equality.
Most things that are alive cannot pass the Turing test, so that fact
the Ring would fail it tells you zilch about whether the Ring is
alive.
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> Since the question is exclusively about the mental capabilities, the
> actions are really irrelevant
That's the problem -- you seem to be using "will" as a synonym for
mental capabilities, and in my view they are quite different things.
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> In message <news:MPG.2171ab595...@news.individual.net>
> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> spoke these staves:
> never really privy to the 'mind' of the opponents in the book. There
> are some hints in 'The Hunt for the Ring' to the thoughts of the
> Witch-king in particular, but with respect to the Ring we still have
> only Gandalf's descriptions to go by.
Because there is not a shred of evidence *anywhere* that the Ring
could think or had a mind, it's not surprising that we don't know
anything about its thoughts.
> > with no ability to plan
>
> It did, actually. The whole 'The Ring was trying to get back to its
> master' speech by Gandalf shows the Ring planning how to achieve that
> goal.
Sorry, but I can't agree. Recall the "wouldn't an Orc have suited it
better?" rejoinder. The Ring did not choose whom to attach to, and it
didn't even chose (really) when to slip off a finger. From Sauron's
and the Ring's perspective, it would have been better if it had
slipped off Isildur's finger on the east shore of Anduin, or even
closer to Mordor.
I just can't escape the feeling that we're talking at cross purposes
here.
Stan Brown
<spam...@blueyonder.co.uk>:
> I wonder. Suppose the Ring _had_ been taken away from Rivendell towards the
> Sea. Would it have, once again, tried to abandon its owner? Why didn't it
> try and do this when the Nazgul were near. Was it unaware of them, or did
> its instincts betray it into thinking that Frodo was taking it nearer to
> Mordor?
Remember that it was almost always on its chain, not on a finger. So
its trick of growing unexpectedly would avail it naught.
Did Frodo actually take it off the chain at Weathertop and Amon Hen,
or did he put his finger parallel to the chain through the Ring? It's
described, IIRC, as a "fine gold chain", which I assume means a thin
gold chain, so there would have been room.
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> You refer to the 'Hunt for the Ring', but while that does give us more
> details about what the Ringwraiths, and the witch-king in particular,
> were thinking, it nevertheless shows them as merely responding to
> external forces -- apart from their bodily abilities (speech, motion
> etc.) do you have any evidence that they actually did anything that was
> impossible to the Ring? No handwaving, no 'it's clear the ring couldn't
> . . .', but actual evidence?
I can only say again that I and others have named numerous actions
that the Ringwraiths took that the Ring could not. I don't understand
why you seem not to understand those. If it were someone I didn't
know, I'd think you were trolling. As it is, I don't understand why
communication has failed on this issue, but I give up.
teepee
"Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote
> If I take your words literally, the implication of using the
> singular, 'the difference' is that this is the only significant
> difference (with respect to what I will, for lack of better words,
> continue to call 'the mind')? More significantly -- for me, at least
> -- that we can imagine the Ring passing the Turing test?
The Turin test? He was pretty stupid, now you mention it.
Christopher Kreuzer
> Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
>> Since the question is exclusively about the mental capabilities, the
>> actions are really irrelevant
>
> That's the problem -- you seem to be using "will" as a synonym for
> mental capabilities, and in my view they are quite different things.
The will of something? I suppose the meaning of the word 'will' depends on
what you are talking about. The will of Denethor is different from the will
of the Ring, for example. But I can understand why it might be thought that
the Ring has a will, but I wouldn't think of it as being a _human_ will.
More an animal will (or instinct), or less than that, even.
Many natural phenomenon have been ascribed to divine wills before there were
scientific explanations, so this sort of confusion isn't that surprising.
Maybe in the case of the Ring, any will is merely a "sense of purpose".
But you can't talk about other inanimate objects having wills. Even the
'magical' objects like Narsil, the Arkenstone, Glamdring, Sting, and so on.
The three rings held by the Elf Lords: Narya, Nenya and Vilya - no wills
there, except those of the bearers.
The One Ring does seem different to these. But that might merely have been
Tolkien trying to create an effect. Not Tolkien trying to suggest that
anything more should be read into it.
Christopher
Johnny1a
wrote:
> "Johnny1a" <shermanl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > I wonder sometimes if Morgoth hadn't managed to just about convince
> > himself, by the time of the wars of the FIrst Age and the
> > Silmarillion, that Eru did not exist? When he told Hurin that he made
> > Arda, I wonder if Morgoth _almost_ believed it, the way Smeagol on a
> > smaller scale almost believed his own lies about the 'birthday
> > present'?
>
> That's very interesting. It sounds like a convincing scenario. I'm also
> reminded of Sauron building temples to Morgoth on Numenor. We know that
> Sauron knew that Morgoth existed, but whether Sauron really believed that
> Morgoth could come back, or whether he was just using Morgoth as a way for
> him to gain more power, I'm not sure.
Whether he believes Melkor can return, I don't know, whether he
_wants_ him to return...probably not, not really.
After the First Age, Sauron was more-or-less his own master in the
proximate sense. He no longer as Morgoth above him, as a master and
potential threat, in the _immediate_ sense.
OTOH, it was said in several places that Melkor's will remained in the
World and guided his servants, though how directly was not made
clear. I doubt Morgoth is able to consciously direct all of Sauron's
specific actions, but Sauron does in a general way to Melkor's will, I
doubt not, at least after his temporary repentence at the end of the
First Age.
The Valar seemed to think that Melkor's will was whispering into the
minds of the Dunedain of Numenor when the Shadow first fell on them,
according to their messengers to the Numenoreans. In their final
council of war at Minas Tirith, Gandalf referred to Sauron as being
'but a servant or emissary', he didn't name any names but it was
pretty clear he was thinking of Morgoth.
I think there were probably multiple reasons he induced the Dunedain
to worship Melkor and not himself. For one thing, the irony of it
probably appealed to Sauron. After all, he's leading the descendents
of Beren and Luthien, of Tuor and Idril, to worship the very Enemy
their ancestors defied repeatedly and escaped from. The Edain
rebelled against Melkor at the dawn of history, before they even met
the Elves, though Tolkien never gives any details of how or why, but
they were fleeing Westward away from the Darkness when Beor met
Finrod.
Later, Luthien (with help from Huan) defeated Sauron pesonally,
forcing him to surrender to her and more-or-less humiliating him, and
later yet Luthien's great-grandson brought the Wrath of the Valar down
on Morgoth and Sauron. In the final battle at the end of the First
Age, the Noldorin Elves sat it out, but the Edain joined with the
armies of Valinor against Morgoth and were part of the triumph of
Good.
So to Sauron, the irony had to be delicious that three thousand years
or so later, the descendents of those Men, both the specific Heir of
Earendil and the majority of the general populace of Numenor, turned
to worship exactly the entity their foreparents had rejected and
helped defeat. It was revenge both personal and ideological.
Also, on a practical level, Sauron can't really hope to get away with
presenting _himself_ to Pharazon and the Dunedain as being the
ultimate power, after all, even in their corruption and Pharazon's
dotage, they knew that Numenor had proven stronger than Mordor in the
crunch, and he couldn't really _do_ any of the things they wanted, he
couldn't release them from Death or anything of the sort. I'm sure he
had Pharazon thoroughly deceived, but I'm pretty sure that had some
limits.
So he needed to convince the Dunedain that God was not real, but that
there was someone who would and could grant them their dearest, more
warped wishes. Melkor was a handy figure for that. Also, I'm pretty
sure the 'religious' ceremonies and sacrifices that Sauron introduced
were already part of the 'theology' of Morgoth from of old, they were
ready-made and available for use.
Finally, remember what Sauron was trying to actually _do_. His goal
was to do by deceit what he wasn't strong enough to do by military
might: wipe out Numenor. In the Second Age, Numenor was the Earth's
strongest state outside of Aman, it was in Sauron's way, a rival for
ultimate power, and always also there was the danger that if some
later generation of the Dunedain repented, it would go back to being a
threat on the side of the Elves and Aman.
So Sauron wanted to con the Dunedain into going to war against the
only force on Earth stronger than they were, the Valar. Inducing the
Dunedain to worship Morgoth, with murderous ceremonies no less, was
one very reliable way to eliminate any remaining sympathy among the
Valar for the Dunedain. It's a far greater insult and blasphemy on
their part to worship Melkor than to worship some figment Sauron might
make up out of thin air.
I'm sure Sauron was expecting the Valar to smash Pharazon's forces and
reduce Numenor to ruins, maybe even destroy the island. I'm fairly
sure he _didn't_ expect God to take a direct hand in the whole sorry
mess.
>
> <snip>
>
> > I once posited a comparison, a long time ago, between the innate
> > strength of an Ainu and a financial investment. My suspicion is that
> > the basic, innate strength of an Ainu is a little like a capitol
> > investment that returns interest, and as long as an Ainu is acting in
> > accordance with the Divine Plan, in his/her proper sphere and scale,
> > it's like drawing on the interest income, the money will renew itself
> > endlessly from interest on the original investment.
>
> I think a direct comparison with energy and entropy works better. I think
> the way the "powers" and Elves fade into the background and become myth and
> legend and how "all things beneath the Sun wear to an end at last" (at least
> in Middle-earth if not in Aman), sounds a lot like entropy, with energy
> becoming more and more dissapated and requiring more and more energy to
> gather back up again. Though the real analogy (or the reality) should be
> with myth and legend! With history and the long defeat.
The trouble is that the Valar have not 'faded'. Unlike Morgoth,
Sauron, or Saruman, Manwe is as powerful today as he when Time began.
Ditto the other Valar. They've _withdrawn_ from open action in the
word, but they still have the power to do so, they just are choosing,
for reasons known to themselves and Eru, to let matters in the mortal
world go as they will (for now).
Choosing not to intervene in the world is a lot different then being
_unable_ to do so.
Shermanlee
Troels Forchhammer
> <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>>
>> Ring passing the Turing test?
>
> That's a false equality.
Please notice the question mark -- I am posing a question, not making
an inference.
And I think I should have been more careful -- I didn't mean a Turing
test in the usual setup (the Ring together with a random human), but
one where the Ring was appear with e.g. Róac the talking raven, or
some other speaking creature that is alive, but does not have a soul.
Another application might be the Ring together with one of the
Ringwraiths -- both were bound to Sauron's will rather than having
their own, so it might be interesting to see if we could distinguish
between them in a Turin setup.
> Most things that are alive cannot pass the Turing test, so that
> fact the Ring would fail it tells you zilch about whether the Ring
> is alive.
But that is precisely the point ;-) The matter of life is, to me,
not very interesting -- not unless someone would wish to argue that
the One Ring really /is/ alive (come now -- wouldn't /somebody/ think
so? <G>)
The Turing test is suggested precisely as a way to compare a human
intelligence to an 'artificial intelligence' (and thus trivially
unalive). Passing the Turing test merely means that it is impossible
to distinguish based on the information provided in the two, even if
simply seeing the two correspondents would trivially show which is
which.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
To make a name for learning
when other roads are barred,
take something very easy
and make it very hard.
- Piet Hein, /Wide Road/
Troels Forchhammer
> <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>>
Looking for
>> any evidence that they actually did anything that was impossible
>> to the Ring? No handwaving, no 'it's clear the ring couldn't
>> . . .', but actual evidence?
>
> I can only say again that I and others have named numerous actions
> that the Ringwraiths took that the Ring could not. I don't
> understand why you seem not to understand those. If it were
> someone I didn't know, I'd think you were trolling. As it is, I
> don't understand why communication has failed on this issue, but I
> give up.
The problem is that the actions that have been named have fallen into
two categories, both of which fails to meet my requirements.
Either they have been related to the physical capabilities (moving,
speaking etc.), which doesn't really have anything to do with what I
am speaking of, or the actions have been simply asserted to be
impossible to the Ring, though it is actually possible to say that
the Ring also did undertake them (though admittedly some of them
require that the 'mind' of the Ring be much closer to the human mind
than I would be willing to allow, but I cannot come up with a really
good reason for rejecting it, and /that/ is my problem in all this).
A good example of the latter is the bit about planning. You all say
that the Ring could not do that, and I'm not arguing against that
position as such (for my own part I don't really think the Ring saw
further than one step ahead, whether than can be called planning or
not), but I'm trying to look one step deeper: /why/ couldn't the Ring
plan ahead, and /how/ can we tell that this is so? I'm asking for
something, /other/ than our pre-conceived ideas of what the Ring
ought to be able to, that can show that the Ring was not and could
not make plans, for instance when it left Gollum -- Gandalf, after
all, attributed to the Ring long-term wishes ('trying to get back to
its master'), choice ('the Ring itself that decided things'),
situation analysis ('as long as it stayed with him he would never
leave his deep pool again'), and what more is needed for planning?
Was the Ring planning to be picked up by an Orc down there (or
perhaps by Gandalf), or was it simply getting away from Gollum with
no 'idea' of what's next? Christopher Kreuzer writes in another
message that he 'always read that as more like a mindless instinct
sort of thing'; very well, but why? I maintain that Gandalf's
description would fit a planning mind just as well as the mindless
instinct, so how can we /know/ that the Ring was not capable of
planning?
I hope this helps explain what my problem is -- I'm not trying to
argue that the One Ring had a human, or even near-human, level
intellect, because I don't think it did. My problem is that I can't
see any really good textual evidence that can show this, and hence
I'm playing the devil's advocate in the hope that somebody can come
up with something better than simply asserting that the Ring could
make plans or that it couldn't dance . . .
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent
whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into
teaching?"
- /Mort/ (Terry Pratchett)
Bill O'Meally
> That's very interesting. It sounds like a convincing scenario. I'm
> also reminded of Sauron building temples to Morgoth on Numenor. We
> know that Sauron knew that Morgoth existed, but whether Sauron really
> believed that Morgoth could come back, or whether he was just using
> Morgoth as a way for him to gain more power, I'm not sure.
In MR, Tolkien states that Sauron's objective in creating a Morgoth-cult
was less for the purpose of worshiping his former Master as for turning
the Numenoreans away from Eru.
Interestingly, Tolkien ascribes the fact that Sauron is even *able* to
recognize that there is a power greater than him represents a small
vestage of good that is remaining in him.
Troels Forchhammer
>
<snip>
> Because there is not a shred of evidence *anywhere* that the Ring
> could think or had a mind, it's not surprising that we don't know
> anything about its thoughts.
I think that is going a bit further than I'd put it. There is
certainly evidence that the Ring had a mind, even if we usually
choose to interpret it to mean something else. If you take Gandalf's
comments together and interpret them literally, then I think the
conclusion that the One Ring could think and had a mind is pretty
inescapable. The important point is, of course, that we don't think
that Gandalf's statements should be interpreted quite as literally as
that.
> I just can't escape the feeling that we're talking at cross
> purposes here.
I think we are. Mostly, as I perceive it, because you're trying to
convince me of something I already agree with ;-)
You're trying to convince of the position itself, while the point
that I do not agree with is the quality of the evidence for rejecting
the different position (i.e. that the One Ring had a mind and
thoughts etc.).
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Scientific reasoning works only with measurements: only
when we have a number and a unit. Thus, topics for which
we have no measurements, scientific investigation is not
useful. No math, no science. When we do have
measurements, scientific reasoning cannot be ignored.
- Dr Nancy's Sweetie on usenet
Message-ID: <ds159c$p45$1...@pcls4.std.com>
Dirk Thierbach
> "Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote
>> More significantly -- for me, at least -- that we can imagine the
>> Ring passing the Turing test?
> The Turin test? He was pretty stupid, now you mention it.
'Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of
Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay
thee swiftly.'
I guess that counts as "pass" for Gurthang. :-) SCNR.
And if a mere sword can be animated/sentient/sapient/semi-conscious/conscious
(or whatever you want to call it), why shouldn't the Ring?
- Dirk
Stan Brown
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
> If you take Gandalf's
> comments together and interpret them literally, then I think the
> conclusion that the One Ring could think and had a mind is pretty
> inescapable.
Could you post one or two of those statements?
"The Ring was trying to get back to Sauron" doesn't qualify, because
"try" can be used of things with no minds: the oyster tries to wall
off the grain of sand into a pearl; the sunflower tries to keep its
face toward the sun; the beaver tries to dam the stream.
Stan Brown
<omea...@wise.rr.com>:
> Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
>
> > That's very interesting. It sounds like a convincing scenario. I'm
> > also reminded of Sauron building temples to Morgoth on Numenor. We
> > know that Sauron knew that Morgoth existed, but whether Sauron really
> > believed that Morgoth could come back, or whether he was just using
> > Morgoth as a way for him to gain more power, I'm not sure.
>
> In MR, Tolkien states that Sauron's objective in creating a Morgoth-cult
> was less for the purpose of worshiping his former Master as for turning
> the Numenoreans away from Eru.
> Interestingly, Tolkien ascribes the fact that Sauron is even *able* to
> recognize that there is a power greater than him represents a small
> vestage of good that is remaining in him.
He lost even that by the end of the Third Age, didn't he? IIRC, he no
longer saw Morgoth as greater than himself. And that's accurate,
because by the end of the First Age Morgoth *wasn't* greater than
Sauron at the end of the Third.
Christopher Kreuzer
Despite what Tolkien wrote(!) it seems probable to me that the talking-sword
episode was a bit OTT, and can be explained away as post-event
mythologising. After all, who can report what was said?
Another theory is that Turin hallucinated the whole thing. Well, right up to
the point where he fell on his sword. He might have realised things were
going a bit wrong at that point...
Christopher
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
I don't have time to respond to all of the post right now, but wanted to
thank you for that post, which I enjoyed reading.
> The trouble is that the Valar have not 'faded'. Unlike Morgoth,
> Sauron, or Saruman, Manwe is as powerful today as he when Time began.
> Ditto the other Valar. They've _withdrawn_ from open action in the
> word, but they still have the power to do so, they just are choosing,
> for reasons known to themselves and Eru, to let matters in the mortal
> world go as they will (for now).
Ah, that is what is claimed! :-) But maybe this should apply only to Elves
in the Outer Lands. The Elves facing the long defeat who dwindle to become a
forgotten folk of dell and cave.
> Choosing not to intervene in the world is a lot different then being
> _unable_ to do so.
And indeed they do so in the Third Age. But after that they don't. The
Dominion of Men begins. The Age of Heroes is over. The Golden Age is gone. I
think I was right. All the analogies are rubbish. It is clearly myth and
legend all the way down (apologies to the old lady and the turtles).
Christopher
Bill O'Meally
I don't think you need to worry
> about the Ring being capable of adapting to contingencies Sauron had
> /not/ imagined.
Not to throw another wrench into the works, but what sort of
contingencies would Sauron have considered? He never dreamed that he
would ever actually lose the Ring in the first place!
Clams Canino
"Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote in message
> I hope this helps explain what my problem is -- I'm not trying to
> argue that the One Ring had a human, or even near-human, level
> intellect, because I don't think it did. My problem is that I can't
> see any really good textual evidence that can show this, and hence
> I'm playing the devil's advocate in the hope that somebody can come
> up with something better than simply asserting that the Ring could
> make plans or that it couldn't dance . . .
I'm loving this thread..... though I'm also in the "not enough text" camp
when it comes time to determine how much "self-determination" the Ring did
or did not have.
-W
Dirk Thierbach
> Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:06:01 +0200 from Troels Forchhammer
> <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>> If you take Gandalf's comments together and interpret them
>> literally, then I think the conclusion that the One Ring could
>> think and had a mind is pretty inescapable.
> Could you post one or two of those statements?
LotR, "The Shadow of the Past"
'Though he had found out that the thing needed looking after; it did
not seem always of the same size or weight; it shrank or expanded in
an odd way, and might suddenly slip off a finger where it had been tight.'
[...]
'A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously,
but its keeper never abandons it. [...] It was not Gollum, Frodo, but
the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.'
[...]
'The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from
Isildur's hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught
poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had
devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small
and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his
deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and
sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum.'
LotR, "At the Sign of The Prancing Pony"
For a moment he wondered if the Ring itself had not played him a trick;
perhaps it had tried to reveal itself in response to some wish or command
that was felt in the room.
SIL, "Of the Rings of Power"
There the Ring betrayed him and avenged its maker, for it
slipped from his finger as he swam, and it was lost in the water.
UT, "The disaster of the gladden fields"
There suddenly he knew that the Ring had gone. By chance, or chance
well used, it had left his hand and gone where he could never hope to
find it again.
> "The Ring was trying to get back to Sauron" doesn't qualify, because
> "try" can be used of things with no minds: the oyster tries to wall
> off the grain of sand into a pearl; the sunflower tries to keep its
> face toward the sun; the beaver tries to dam the stream.
I think the above passages (though, as usual with Tolkien, in parts
deliberately ambigous) go well beyond that. Especially "treacherously"
and "betrayed" give the impression that the Ring knows pretty well
what it is doing. Similarly phrasings like "it *caught* Deagol". That
looks pretty active.
Add to that the fact that the Ring for some reason seems to slip on or
off fingers at the most convenient time ... is that all just "chance,
as we say in Middle-Earth"?
The difference to the oyster is that the oyster has no choice in the matter:
If you put a grain of sand in it, it will wall it off. The Ring on the
other hand has the choice when to modify its own size (and, oddly,
it seems even to be able to draw attention to it when it wants to
be found), and all this works out always to the advantage of the Ring.
And that is what I would consider as a sign of "sentience" (or whatever
you like to call it).
- Dirk
Dirk Thierbach
> "Dirk Thierbach" <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> wrote:
>> teepee <nom...@nomail.com> wrote:
>>> "Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote
>>>> More significantly -- for me, at least -- that we can imagine the
>>>> Ring passing the Turing test?
>>> The Turin test? He was pretty stupid, now you mention it.
>> 'Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of
>> Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay
>> thee swiftly.'
>> I guess that counts as "pass" for Gurthang. :-) SCNR.
>> And if a mere sword can be
>> animated/sentient/sapient/semi-conscious/conscious
>> (or whatever you want to call it), why shouldn't the Ring?
> Despite what Tolkien wrote(!) it seems probable to me that the
> talking-sword episode was a bit OTT,
Sorry, what do you mean by OTT?
> and can be explained away as post-event mythologising.
I don't think so. IIRC, the talking sword was also in the original
Kalevala-Story which inspired Turin.
And objects "with a Will of their own" are standard stuff in fairy-tales.
Many of those can talk, too.
> After all, who can report what was said?
It's a *story*, not *history*. The reader/listener gets to see many things,
even though in the story itself no historian is present to accurately
record them. (For some reason, I have to think now of all those
"reality TV" shows, where having all those people with cameras around
must be annoying as hell for those who are filmed and are still supposed
to act normally.)
> Another theory is that Turin hallucinated the whole thing.
*Shrug* Why make things difficult? It's an imagined fairy-tale world.
We have talking trees and lots of other wierd stuff. If we can accept
those, what's the problem with accepting "animated" objects?
The simplest explanation is that the sword *can* talk, that this is
a rather impressive moment in the story, and that it maybe even tells
us something general about, hm, the way humans are. No need for difficult
"but the author is trying to deceive us" constructions IMHO.
- Dirk
Troels Forchhammer
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
I've been wondering if some of all these discussions may be due to
different perspectives. I've stated a few times that the Ring, in my
opinion, functions in the story as an independent character of the
say level as e.g. the Witch-king. This is essentially a literary view
that completely ignores the underlying 'mechanics', or 'secondary
science', of the situation, even if it does, I belive, shape one's
immediate impression of the Ring. if you perceive it as a character
in the story, you are more likely, or willing, to attribute to it the
qualities and capabilities normally attributed to characters in a
story.
>> I don't think you need to worry about the Ring being capable
>> of adapting to contingencies Sauron had /not/ imagined.
>
> Not to throw another wrench into the works, but what sort of
> contingencies would Sauron have considered?
Probably not very many, I agree. In the 'computer-program' model it
would probably be sufficient to build in a 'get back to me if you're
lost' contingency instruction (with some simple instructions for
weighting situations against each other: "with Gollum" vs. "not with
Gollum").
> He never dreamed that he would ever actually lose the Ring in
> the first place!
I'm not sure that his lack of imagination was quite as grievous as
that -- in letter #131 Tolkien suggests (or at least I understand it
in that way) that Sauron did consider what might happen should the
Ring fall into the hands of someone else, but he still considered
that a very unlikely, perhaps even impossible, event.
Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it.
[...] If that happened, the new possessor could [...]
overthrow him and usurp his place. This was the essential
weakness he had introduced into his situation [...]. There
was another weakness: if the One Ring was actually unmade,
[...]. But that he never contemplated nor feared. [...].
Also so great was the Ring's power of lust, that anyone
who used it became mastered by it; it was beyond the
strength of any will (even his own) to injure it, cast it
away, or neglect it. So he thought. It was in any case on
his finger.
[Letters #131, to Milton Waldman, ?late 1951]
To me, this suggests that Sauron did consider what would happen
should anyone other than he get the Master Ring ('so he thought'),
but that he didn't consider that a serious threat. The unmaking of
the Ring 'he never contemplated or feared'.
Incidentally I think that Sauron was as much mastered by the Ring as
he was the master of it -- even he did not possess the 'strength of
will' to 'injure it, cast it away or neglect it' (nothing said about
attempting to unmake it -- that was /not/ contemplated).
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Ash nazg durbatuluk,
ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatuluk
agh burzum ishi krimpatul.
- /The Fellowship of the Ring/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Bill O'Meally
> Incidentally I think that Sauron was as much mastered by the Ring as
> he was the master of it
Indeed! If not more so. Sauron needed the Ring more than it needed him.
His very existence depended upon it, whereas Sauron could be physically
destroyed yet the Ring still functioned fine.
JimboCat
>But I am not suggesting that the
>Ring be intelligent in manner that goes further than that of such
>animals, which Tolkien contrasted to 'true "rational" creatures,
>"speaking peoples",' (by which he essentially, IMO, meant creatures
>with a soul) which he, by the way, asserted were 'all of human /
>'humanoid' form.'
>
>I've stated elsewhere that I don't believe the One to have had a soul
>or even Free Will, and in Tolkien that would, at most, mean something
>with an intelligence akin to that of Róac, the trush and similar
>(it's late in Denmark and I can't come up with more examples right
>now <G>) -- not what he described as 'true "rational" creatures'.
Wow, did JRRT really write that ("all of human/humanoid form")? That's
hard to reconcile with the dragons, for one. Smaug and Glaurung
certainly seem rational (though evilly twisted, of course) and there
is no doubt at all that they were capable of speech in all its
complexities (e.g. lying, boasting, fantasizing and other abstract
conceptualizations). They clearly had their own "theory of mind": they
could predict what effect their words would have on others, and choose
their own speech to advance their own ends.
I also wonder whether JRRT would assert that Treebeard and the Ents
were "humanoid" -- I guess I'd have to say "yes", since Treebeard
himself puts the Ents among "the speaking peoples". That's stretching
"humanoid" a bit, if you ask me!
I wonder finally if this reveals Tolkien's Catholicism in a way I have
not before perceived: the Bible, after all, says that God made Man in
His own image (I don't recall any similar text in the Ainulindalë).
Did JRRT believe that Eru, himself, was "humanoid in form"???
Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"Not only is the act of modifying pi beyond our power,
not only is it beyond our understanding, but the very
idea of its possibility is beyond our understanding.
That kind of transcendent superiority is, to me, very
much part of the idea of a deity."
-- Wim Lewis (on Sagan's /Contact/)
Troels Forchhammer
<news:2007100906414...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
Dirk Thierbach <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> spoke these staves:
> Christopher Kreuzer <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> "Dirk Thierbach" <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> wrote:
>>>
>>> And if a mere sword can be animated/sentient/sapient/
>>
>> Despite what Tolkien wrote(!) it seems probable to me that the
>> talking-sword episode was a bit OTT,
>
> Sorry, what do you mean by OTT?
Over The Top, perhaps? I was perplexed about it as well, and this
was the most probable suggestion offered by Acronym Finder ;)
>> and can be explained away as post-event mythologising.
>
> I don't think so. IIRC, the talking sword was also in the original
> Kalevala-Story which inspired Turin.
It was. And it was probably one of the things that stuck in the young
Tolkien's mind and was part of the Kalevala retelling that he
started, but which got diverted into the Túrin story.
I would suggest that both the talking sword -- as well as the troll
purse in /The Hobbit/ -- have entered Tolkien's mythology by a back-
door, so to speak. Both are exceptions to a general rule that have
entered by special permission: Gurthang because of Kalevala and the
purse because it was in a children's story, that wasn't intended
relate back into the mythology (and in the latter case the whole
thing can be dismissed as a mere magical alarm).
With the One Ring, it is, IMO, a different matter: it is native to
Tolkien's mythology, and must obey the rules set up for that
mythology, while Gurthang and the purse can be exceptions from these
rules precisely because they are not, in origin, natives to Tolkien's
mythology.
> And objects "with a Will of their own" are standard stuff in
> fairy-tales. Many of those can talk, too.
As is the externalisation of the soul -- the ogre put its soul in a
stone, and the stone quivered before it was smashed (upon which the
ogre died). Stuff like that is, if not common, then at least part of
the standard stock of the story-brew.
When I nevertheless hesitate to embrace the full consequences (as
I've said elsewhere, I don't believe that there was a part of
Sauron's spirit in the One Ring, with the ensuing limitations to it's
mind) it is precisely because the purse and the sword are elements
borrowed elsewhere, whereas the Ring is Tolkien's own (at least in
it's incarnation as more than a Ring of Invisibility +1), and I find
it difficult to imagine Tolkien accepting that the Ring, even unique
artefact as it is, could have a soul.
>> After all, who can report what was said?
>
> It's a *story*, not *history*. The reader/listener gets to see
> many things, even though in the story itself no historian is
> present to accurately record them.
[...]
Aye. The words spoken by the sword are an integral part of the story,
and must be actual, even if they imply something that doesn't really
belong in the world into which the scene has been adopted.
<snip>
> The simplest explanation is that the sword *can* talk, that this
> is a rather impressive moment in the story, and that it maybe even
> tells us something general about, hm, the way humans are. No need
> for difficult "but the author is trying to deceive us"
> constructions IMHO.
It is at any rate essential to a genuine fairy-story, as
distinct from the employment of this form for lesser or
debased purposes, that it should be presented as 'true.'
[On Fairy-stories]
I agree entirely that we must accept the speech of Gurthang as
actually real within Tolkien's sub-created world -- anything less
would debase the story. I am, however, not convinced that accepting
Gurthang as real (inside Middle-earth) also should force us to accept
it as a rule or a precedence that can be applied to other situations.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science
is blind.
- Albert Einstein
Troels Forchhammer
<news:2007100907135...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
>>
>> Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:06:01 +0200 from Troels Forchhammer
>> <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>>>
>>> If you take Gandalf's comments together and interpret them
>>> literally, then I think the conclusion that the One Ring could
>>> think and had a mind is pretty inescapable.
>>
>> Could you post one or two of those statements?
>
> LotR, "The Shadow of the Past"
Thanks Dirk!
And moving also beyond Gandalf, I'll add a few more (all emphasis
mine).
At last with an effort he turned back, and as he did so,
*he felt the Ring resisting him*, dragging at the chain
about his neck; *and his eyes too*, as he looked away,
seemed for the moment to have been blinded.
[LotR IV,8 'The Stairs of Cirith Ungol']
Maybe it was the Ring that called to the Wraith-lord, . . .
[ibid]
. . . the Ring's power grew, and it became more fell,
untameable save by some mighty will.
[LotR VI,1 'The Tower of Cirith Ungol']
Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and
reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw
Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age,
[ibid]
Notice the fantasies of 'Samwise the Strong' which seem alien to
Sam's mind -- they seem constructed outside and then shown to Sam
rather than an expression of Sam's own aspirations (which follow
quickly -- the kingdom garden).
. . . a burden on the body and a torment to his mind . . .
[LotR VI,3 'Mount Doom']
And much of the strength *and will* of Sauron passed into
that One Ring
[Silm V 'Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age']
And he deemed that the Ring, which was Sauron's, would
seek for its master
[ibid]
The point is not so much in the individual quotation -- none of them
is anything near strong evidence on it's own -- but rather in the
effect of them all together. Both Gandalf and the narrator
consistently use antropomorphisms about the Ring, in particular by
attributing it with intention and purpose ('and avenged its maker',
'/it/ may slip off treacherously'). If you take all these statements
literally, then the Ring is capable of quite a lot:
- shrinking and expanding
- looking after itself
- treachery / betrayal
- decision
- 'devouring' its bearer
- using its bearer ('it could make no further use of [Gollum]')
- judging its bearer ('he was too small and mean; . . .')
- abandoning its bearer
- vengeance
- resisting the intentions of its bearer
- calling out to allies
- affecting the mind and the will of its bearer
- seeking for its master
Interpreting this literally, would require that the Ring have an
emotional register, an understanding of abstract concepts (such as
vengeance) as well as the capacity for rational thought, something
which, in the real world, is characteristic of humans only. Also the
Ring is often described as taking action, it is a subject, and it is
described as the direct cause of events that move the story onwards
-- as I've said in other posts, it serves the role of an ordinary
character at the literary level.
As I said earlier, I don't believe that all of this must be
interpreted literally, but I am not satisfied that the literal
interpretation (or at least a far more literal interpretation than
mine) can be rejected. I'd be happy if we could just come up with a
good argument that would show that such an interpretation is
extremely unlikely (
<snip>
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis
best suited to open the way to the next better one.
- Konrad Lorenz
Stan Brown
<dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de>:
> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> > Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:06:01 +0200 from Troels Forchhammer
> > <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>
> >> If you take Gandalf's comments together and interpret them
> >> literally, then I think the conclusion that the One Ring could
> >> think and had a mind is pretty inescapable.
>
> > Could you post one or two of those statements?
[snippity]
Thanks for posting the quotes. I understand that you find them
persuasive, but I'm afraid I don't. Possibly we mean different things
by "mind" and "think".
> Add to that the fact that the Ring for some reason seems to slip on or
> off fingers at the most convenient time ... is that all just "chance,
> as we say in Middle-Earth"?
I believe that's a false dichotomy. The choices are not "thinking
with a mind" versus total chance.
Is the web a spider spins, with a particular shape and anchor points
*here* rather than *there*, a matter of chance? I don't think so, and
I suspect you don't either. Does the spider think? does it have a
mind? Here again, I would answer No, and I suspect you would too. The
spider is operating by instinct, and its behavior is considerably
more complex than that of the Ring.
I'll grant the Ring the intelligence level of a spider, if you like.
:-) But to put it on a par with the Witch-King seems quite wrong to
me, especially after I re-read "The Hunt for the Ring" last night.
Bill O'Meally
> He lost even that by the end of the Third Age, didn't he? IIRC, he no
> longer saw Morgoth as greater than himself. And that's accurate,
> because by the end of the First Age Morgoth *wasn't* greater than
> Sauron at the end of the Third.
The believe you're thinking of the passage in 'Myths Transformed' (MR p
394):
"Sauron was 'greater', effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth was
in the First. Why? Because, though he was far smaller by natural
stature, he had not yet fallen so low. Eventually he had also squandered
his power (of being) in the endeavor to gain control of others. But he
was not obliged to expend so much of himself. To gain dominion over
Arda, Morgoth had let most of his being pass into the *physical*
constituents of the Earth .... Sauron, however, inherited the
'corruption' of Arda, and only spent his (much more limited) power on
the Rings; for it was the *creatures* of the earth, in their *minds and
wills*, that he desired to dominate. In this way Sauron was also wiser
than Melkor-Morgoth. Sauron was not a beginner of discord; and he
probably knew more of the 'Music' than did Melkor, whose mind had always
been filled with his own plans and devises, and gave little attention to
other things".
In another passage, it is stated that Sauron also had greater control
over the Orcs.
I do note that Tolkien uses qualifiers in this passage: he puts quotes
around the word "greater", uses terms like "effectively". For one thing,
I think what he is getting at is that Sauron built upon the evil that
Morgoth had injected into Arda. He was only greater than Morgoth in the
sense that he was standing on the shoulders of a giant, so to speak.
Another thing is that Sauron had a much more narrow scope in wanting
only to *control* the minds and wills of *creatures*. Morgoth's was much
more broad: he wanted to control, and really, to destroy *everything*.
It is stated that he would have even eventually destroyed his own armies
once they had outlived their purpose. Sauron's more narrow scope is also
consistent with his MO of *concentrating* his power, without squandering
all of it, in the Rings. Morgoth's broad scope is manifest in his
*disseminating* his power in the very substance of Arda. Basically,
Sauron seemed to be able to keep his shit together better than Morgoth
did!
As an aside, I find it fascinating to note that Sauron was more attuned
to the Music than Melkor was.
Clams Canino
"Stan Brown" <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
> I'll grant the Ring the intelligence level of a spider, if you like.
> :-) But to put it on a par with the Witch-King seems quite wrong to
> me, especially after I re-read "The Hunt for the Ring" last night.
On par with the Witch-King might be a little strong - agreed.
However, I'd give it a sentiance at least on par with a dog. Now lest you
think a dog operates *only* on instinct, you need to observe a GSD and run
more tests. Ours is capable of "sneak" (*waiting* until you leave the room
to pinch a free meal off the coffee table, that it *pretends* to not notice
until you turn the corner. Outright deception (barking for no reason at the
front window, so you'll come investigate - thereby leaving the theater door
ajar for him to make a quick move in. ( I note here that his *instict* is to
want to be with his pack (people), sure - however engaging in active
*deception* to get the door to open is consious thought - there are no false
alarms otherwise.) Also it knows what it **wants** ie When tested, the dog
will will abandon a bowl of raw hamburger if I jingle the boat keys and pick
up the go-bag. Seems he would **rather** go out alone and play with the dogs
and people on "beer can island" than to stay (with all the rest of his
"pack") and finish his meat - so he makes an active *choice*.
To give an even better example: instictive "prey drive" will compell the
GSD to chase a tennis ball every_single_time you hit one past it - it's
"compelled" to chase it. However, when you're sitting at the computer and
the GSD walks to the back door, drops a tennis ball - looks at you - and if
you fail to respond, then walks back into the other room, grabs a tennis
racket, and comes back and bumps you with it..... you get the impression
the critter ***wants*** to go outside and do this ball stuff because it's
bored and/or wants to be amused. This is differentiated from the
compulsion to chase the ball *IF* it's hit without the dogs foreknowledge.
So ya.... the Ring has a lot of instinct sure.... but I'd say the Ring is
*at least* as sentiant as a German Shepard. It knows what it wants, and can
devise "strange means" to achieve it.
-W
Johnny1a
> Stan Brown wrote:
> > He lost even that by the end of the Third Age, didn't he? IIRC, he no
> > longer saw Morgoth as greater than himself. And that's accurate,
> > because by the end of the First Age Morgoth *wasn't* greater than
> > Sauron at the end of the Third.
>
>
> Another thing is that Sauron had a much more narrow scope in wanting
> only to *control* the minds and wills of *creatures*. Morgoth's was much
> more broad: he wanted to control, and really, to destroy *everything*.
> It is stated that he would have even eventually destroyed his own armies
> once they had outlived their purpose. Sauron's more narrow scope is also
> consistent with his MO of *concentrating* his power, without squandering
> all of it, in the Rings. Morgoth's broad scope is manifest in his
> *disseminating* his power in the very substance of Arda. Basically,
> Sauron seemed to be able to keep his shit together better than Morgoth
> did!
>
> As an aside, I find it fascinating to note that Sauron was more attuned
> to the Music than Melkor was.
>
> --
> Bill
To put it more simply, as I see it, Sauron's goal was potentially
achievable, at least in theory, whereas Morgoth's was ultimately not.
Morgorth wanted, in the final, ultimate analysis, to unmake Ea, which
was impossible. Sauron, OTOH, wanted to conquer the world, the rule
Elves and Men...and that, in theory, is doable.
As for the Music, Melkor was the _first_ evil, he had already begun to
fall back in the times when Sauron was still essentially good. Sauron
was tempted, at some point, by Melkor, before that he was presumably
loyal to Eru and trying to do what he was supposed to do in his part
of the Singing.
Johnny1a
wrote:
> In message <news:MPG.2172ffbe9...@news.individual.net>
> Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> spoke these staves:
>
>
>
> > Sun, 07 Oct 2007 20:32:19 +0200 from Troels Forchhammer
> > <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>
> >> More significantly -- for me, at least -- that we can imagine the
> >> Ring passing the Turing test?
>
> > That's a false equality.
>
> Please notice the question mark -- I am posing a question, not making
> an inference.
>
> And I think I should have been more careful -- I didn't mean a Turing
> test in the usual setup (the Ring together with a random human), but
> one where the Ring was appear with e.g. Róac the talking raven, or
> some other speaking creature that is alive, but does not have a soul.
Are you _sure_ Roac is soulless?
Johnny1a
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> > Incidentally I think that Sauron was as much mastered by the Ring as
> > he was the master of it
>
> Indeed! If not more so. Sauron needed the Ring more than it needed him.
> His very existence depended upon it, whereas Sauron could be physically
> destroyed yet the Ring still functioned fine.
Yeah, but physically destroying Sauron's body doesn't actually do
much, as long as the One Ring exists he _will_ eventually return.
The debate about whether the Ring had 'orders' to come back to
him...there may have been contingency instructions to whatever passed
for the Ring's mind, but I don't think that particular one was
necessary. The Ring, IMHO, _automatically_ was drawn back toward
Sauron, since it's a 'chip off the block', the living energy in the
Ring is Sauron's living energy, part of Sauron is in the Ring. Sauron
always returns to Arda if the Ring still exists, the Ring always tries
to get back to Sauron. I think they more-or-less draw each other by
their nature.
In this respect, the Ring might be a little like the Seven Fathers of
the Dwarves before God brought them to life. The Seven Fathers were
animated by Aule's own essence, his own will and power. Had Aule
chosen, I think he could probably have infused some of his essence
into one on a permanent basis, and by doing so made a sort of self-
animated artificially intelligent robot akin to the 'intelligence' of
the Ring...but it still wouldn't have been a person, just an extension
of Aule.
Johnny1a
wrote:
> "Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> > Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> spoke these staves:
>
>
> >> with no ability to plan
>
> > It did, actually. The whole 'The Ring was trying to get back to its
> > master' speech by Gandalf shows the Ring planning how to achieve that
> > goal. Obviously the Ring had to serve Sauron's purposes, it was
> > forced to do his will, but that is precisely the point of using the
> > Ringwraiths for comparison, because so did they.
>
> I always read that as more like a mindless instinct sort of thing. Birds
> migrate with the seasons, and newborn mammals instinctively suckle for milk
> at their mother's teats, so you can say that the birds and the newborn
> mammals are trying to do something, but it doesn't mean they are planning
> it.
>
> Let's look at the passage in full:
>
> I don't think that the Ring was carefully plotting ways to escape from
> Isildur, or spending thousands of years wondering whether it had done the
> right thing to drop off Isildur's finger and end up on the bottom of the
> Anduin. Rather, I think of the Ring as only having a very limited awareness
> of its suroundings. It wouldn't for instance (though this is purest
> speculation), know that it was at the bottom of a river, or under a
> mountain. What it _would_ be aware of it living beings, and of course
> Sauron's will.
I agree. I think, truthfully, that the awareness of the RIng depends
in part on the status of Sauron. My strong guess is that during the
first 2000 years or so of the Third Age, the One Ring was more or less
dormant, asleep, just sitting there as if it were really just a gold
ring. Surely lots of people were in and about the Gladden Fields over
the course of _two thousand years_, yet it was never found, and the
Ring has a way of being found when it's awake.
Now, when Sauron returned to Arda and began to regain his strength, I
think the One Ring 'awakened' a bit, and began to try to get back to
Sauron. It _couldn't_ 'get back' to him until he returned to Arda,
that first stage had to consist of Sauron coming back to Arda, Sauron
trying to get back to the Ring. As Sauron got stronger and more
powerful, the Ring, I think, got more 'awake' and was able to think
and reason (or simulate such) more effectively. Also, the closer
together in space Sauron and the RIng are, the stronger both get, I
suspect.
Thus Sauron's growing strength and his relative proximity (Dol Guldur
is actually harrowingly close to the Gladden Fields) brought the Ring
back 'on-line'. Thus the Ring called out to Deagol, and set the
sequence of events in motion.
Now, once Bilbo had it, and took it back to the Shire, I think the
Ring got 'drowsier', because he was taking it much further away from
Sauron, and into domains where Sauron's spiritual power was inherently
weaker, the old lands of Arnor and Gil-Galad. So the Ring was slower
to evil in the Shire than it would have been, say, in the Vales of
Anduin. But Sauron was still getting stronger, and thus so was the
Ring, albeit slowly.
By the time of LOTR, when the Ring was in Mordor on Orodruin, by that
point Sauron was almost all the way back to (Ringless) full power, and
the Ring was close to Sauron in space and in the midst of the center
of Sauron's power, and it was really thinking and aware in its way.
It was still an extension of Sauron, though, not a person.
> I wonder. Suppose the Ring _had_ been taken away from Rivendell towards the
> Sea. Would it have, once again, tried to abandon its owner?
Very probably. It would have to have been carefully kept track of,
since it would have sensed it was moving away from Sauron, and it was
probably 'aware' enough to have some sense of what was going on.
> Why didn't it
> try and do this when the Nazgul were near.
It did try in the _Prancing Pony_, and if a good chance had come it
would probably have tried at Weathertop or the Morgul Vale. But no
good chance came, and the next-best option was for Frodo to put on the
Ring and thus make himself very _visible_ to the Nazgul. (This is, in
my mind, evidence that the Ring can 'think' to a certain extent, it
was able to make a plan on the spot.)
Johnny1a
> Sun, 07 Oct 2007 12:58:25 +0200 from Troels Forchhammer
> <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>
> > In message <news:MPG.2171ab595...@news.individual.net>> > Obviously that restriction makes it much more difficult, since we are
> > never really privy to the 'mind' of the opponents in the book. There
> > are some hints in 'The Hunt for the Ring' to the thoughts of the
> > Witch-king in particular, but with respect to the Ring we still have
> > only Gandalf's descriptions to go by.
>
> Because there is not a shred of evidence *anywhere* that the Ring
> could think or had a mind, it's not surprising that we don't know
> anything about its thoughts.
Slipping of Isildur's finger was planning, of a sort. The urge that
was calling Frodo to put on the Ring in Morgul Vale _had_ be to coming
from the Ring, because the Witch-King didn't know Frodo was there (if
he had, there'd have been a change in plan on Mordor's part). Ditto
the _Prancing Pony_ incident, ditto the decision to abandon Gollum.
Whether it was consciously self-aware, we can't say for sure, but we
_know_ that artifacts can be imbued with something like a mentality in
Tolkien's world, the evidence includes Turin's sword and the Watchers
of Cirith Ungol.
The RIng was far more than just an inanimate object.
Johnny1a
> didn't even chose (really) when to slip off a finger. From Sauron's
> and the Ring's perspective, it would have been better if it had
> slipped off Isildur's finger on the east shore of Anduin, or even
> closer to Mordor.
It chose to leave Gollum, and it chose the ideal moment to leave
Isildur to get him killed. It might have been better to drop of his
finger on the east bank, but then Isildur might well have immediately
realized it, too. The Ring can and does expand and contract, but I
doubt it can do it instantaneously.
Johnny1a
wrote:
>
> Interpreting this literally, would require that the Ring have an
> emotional register, an understanding of abstract concepts (such as
> vengeance) as well as the capacity for rational thought, something
> which, in the real world, is characteristic of humans only.
The thing is that with the One Ring, you've got a little piece of
Sauron with you, and it shares his nature and his goals. One might
compare it to a hologram, in which (at least in some applications)
cutting out a piece of the hologram leaves you with a lesser copy of
the whole thing.
As I said elsewhere on this thread, I think the Ring and Sauron get
stronger and more potent, and the Ring more 'alive' as they draw
closer together in space. If the Ring is actually on Sauron's finger,
I think they more or less become 'one', the divided essence reunites
and Sauron regains the strength he had of old. I don't think there's
anyone else in Ea who can use the One Ring quite as effectively or
perfectly as Sauron, since it's an extension of himself. I doubt if
even Melkor could use it quite as easily and naturally as Sauron.
Dirk Thierbach
> Tue, 9 Oct 2007 09:13:59 +0200 from Dirk Thierbach
> <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de>:
>> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> > Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:06:01 +0200 from Troels Forchhammer
>> > <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid>:
>>
>> >> If you take Gandalf's comments together and interpret them
>> >> literally, then I think the conclusion that the One Ring could
>> >> think and had a mind is pretty inescapable.
>>
>> > Could you post one or two of those statements?
> [snippity]
> Thanks for posting the quotes. I understand that you find them
> persuasive, but I'm afraid I don't. Possibly we mean different things
> by "mind" and "think".
Possibly. What I mean is some ability to evaluate a situation and to act
accordingly. Higher animals already have this ability. Say, cats.
>> Add to that the fact that the Ring for some reason seems to slip on or
>> off fingers at the most convenient time ... is that all just "chance,
>> as we say in Middle-Earth"?
> I believe that's a false dichotomy. The choices are not "thinking
> with a mind" versus total chance.
I think they are. If you want to find out if some entity "thinks" (in
my sense) or doesn't, then unless you can communicate with it, you've
no choice but to watch its actions and see if the decisions it makes
reveal an understanding of the situation, or are just plain automatic,
or just random.
> Is the web a spider spins, with a particular shape and anchor points
> *here* rather than *there*, a matter of chance? I don't think so,
I'd say it is. Insects usually have very simple "programs" they use,
though this can already generate complex behaviour. I don't know about
spiders, but I know about experiments with certain sorts of wasps
which show this. I can give more details if you like.
> and I suspect you don't either. Does the spider think? does it have
> a mind? Here again, I would answer No, and I suspect you would too.
I agree.
> The spider is operating by instinct, and its behavior is
> considerably more complex than that of the Ring.
I disagree. The complexity of the behaviour of the Ring lies in its
ability to *evaluate* a rather difficult situation correctly, and then
act accordingly. The Ring has to *understand* that Isildur is attacked
by Orcs, will become vulnerable when visible, and that the best
chance to hurt Isildur is to slip off his finger *right now*. Etc.
> I'll grant the Ring the intelligence level of a spider, if you like.
> :-)
If you can grant the Ring the intelligence level of a cat, then I think
we're in agreement :-)
> But to put it on a par with the Witch-King seems quite wrong to
> me, especially after I re-read "The Hunt for the Ring" last night.
That would seem wrong to me, too (and I never claimed this). The
Ring may actually have intelligence on par with a human, but from the
behaviour observed, we cannot deduce it. And in the way I always
imagined it, it hasn't.
- Dirk
Öjevind Lång
news:QEAOi.290727$xp6.2...@fe3.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
[snip]
>> 'Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of
>> Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay
>> thee swiftly.'
>>
>> I guess that counts as "pass" for Gurthang. :-) SCNR.
>>
>> And if a mere sword can be
>> animated/sentient/sapient/semi-conscious/conscious
>> (or whatever you want to call it), why shouldn't the Ring?
>
> Despite what Tolkien wrote(!) it seems probable to me that the
> talking-sword episode was a bit OTT, and can be explained away as
> post-event mythologising. After all, who can report what was said?
Story-externally, of course, it is a ripoff from the Kalevala, the Finnish
national epic, where Kullervo, having unwittingly commitetd incest with his
sister, kills himself with his sword, which replies to him in exactly the
same manner. (And his sister drowns himself, just like Niënor.)
Öjevind