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    • S*%# Philosophy Professors Say (hat-tip Joshua Heller w.r.t. The Tubes)

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      Justin Weinberg has a nice post and discussion at the dailynous of the old story that people on airplanes ask us for our sayings (it's variously attributed, twenty-five or so years ago Charles Hartshorne told me it happened to him). It was kind of a cool synchronicity that on the same day I read Weinberg's post, I discovered this? There's not that much wisdom among them, but some are pretty funny. Examples:

      “Logicians love to confuse people, just for the sake of getting clear on logic.”

      — Logic professor

      “Let me tell you about how different philosophy classes were in the ’60’s. I had a Norwegian philosophy professor at Berkeley who, one day, had our class take a walk through San Francisco and climb up a rope onto a cliff. Then we sat at his feet while he read from ‘Being and Time’.”

      — Philosophy of Mind professor

      “I always laughed at the honor pledge because it seems like that would be the first thing you would lie about.”

      — Ethics professor

      “This is at least how it works for human beings. I don’t know how it works for gods—I’ve never been one and I don’t know any.”

      — Philosophy of Mind professor

      Good stuff! Joe Bob says check it out.

    • Ferraris on Strawson and a Heidegger on Kant

      Nice NDPR review here by Riccardo Pozzo of Maurizio Ferraris' Goodbye Kant!: What Still Stands of the Critique of Pure Reason. According to Pozzo, the book is actually a best-seller in Italy, which is pretty cool. There's also this very funny passage (have to read it through to the end):

      For Ferraris, given that "ontology includes everything that is in heaven and earth, the realm of objects that are available to experience," which makes up the first main topic of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and given that "metaphysics deals with what goes beyond or transcends [experience]," which makes up the second main topic of the book, it does indeed make sense to speak of Kant's metaphysics and ontology (p. 20). In fact, "the reader of the Analytic has before him Kant's ontology, a work of construction and not of destruction" (p. 21). Ferraris follows suit with the two otherwise opposed readings of Kant by Strawson and Heidegger, with Strawson calling for a metaphysics of experience and Heidegger for an analysis of finite human being, "which amounts" — Ferraris succinctly notes — "to the same thing, said with more passion" (p. 21). 

      Ferraris himself is rapidly becoming one of the key figures in the movement in continental philosophy sometimes called "the new realism" or "back to metaphysics." His English language wikipedia page is pretty informative as far as these things go. In light of the recent reappraisal of Derrida by people such as Paul Livingston, Martin Hagglund, Graham Priest, and Debbie Goldgaber (following earlier work by people such as Sam Wheeler, and to some extent contraposed by Lee Braver's important interpretation of Derrida) it's interesting that Ferraris's early work is influenced by, and often about, Derrida. The wikipedia page (take with a grain of salt) says that his new realism comes in part by systematizing Vattimo and Derrida. A bunch of his stuff is coming out in English over the next few years. It will be fun to follow it.

       

    • Adam Kotsko provides helpful feedback to Derrida

      This is very funny. In the spirit of Derrida responding to Searle, I'll just go ahead and fully exerpt Kotsko's annotated version of the first two paragraphs of "Structure, Sign, and Play:"

      Perhaps [weasel-word!] something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an “event,” if this loaded word [loaded according to whom?] did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function [is this really its only function?] of structural–or structuralist–thought [which is it?] to reduce or to suspect [again, which?]. But let me use the word “event” anyway, employing it with caution and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this event will have the exterior form of a rupture and a redoubling [why?  Unpack this].

      It would be easy enough to show [then show it!  This is a big generalization that you never support!] that the concept of structure and even the word “structure” itself are as old as the episteme [is this a reference to Foucault?  In that case, cite]–that is to say, as old as western science and western philosophy [this is a big claim, citation?]–and that their roots thrust deep into the soil of ordinary language, into whose deepest recesses the episteme plunges to gather them together once more, making them part of itself in a metaphorical displacement [unclear — I think I see what you're getting at, but it could be expanded and unpacked a bit more]. Nevertheless, up until the event which I wish to mark out and define [maybe you should lead off with what this event is supposed to be, rather than making the reader wait? I'm already losing the thread], structure–or rather the structurality of structure–although it has always [careful with these generalizations] been involved, has always been neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or referring it to a point of presence [this feels jargony to me], a fixed origin. The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure–one cannot in fact conceive of an unorganized structure–but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the freeplay of the structure [what does this mean?  Unpack]. No doubt [this does not seem as immediately obvious to me] that by orienting and organizing the coherence of the system, the center of a structure permits the freeplay of its elements inside the total form. And even today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself [this seems a bit overblown — maybe nuance?].

      I think with the very best satire there is always instability concerning the target. Moreover, as Kotsko's effort makes clear, a measure of how ideological you are might be the extent to which you fail to realize this. Here one could with equal justification view Kotsko as satirizing either Derrida or his detractors. The inability to see it as both would be a clear example of the way that ideological commitments trump aesthetic ones. Not that that's always a bad thing. The early Nietzsche was, after all, wrong about the primacy of aesthetic norms over moral ones. I do, however, wonder what the final draft of The Birth of Tragedy would have read like if he'd turned it in to me for comment.

    • SPEP program on-line

      The program for the up and coming SPEP conference in New Orleans* is on-line here.

      Compared to the last two years, Badiou and German Idealism are very well represented this year. Cool stuff! 

      I'm pouring a little bit of rum** on the ground every night in the hope that it will propitiate whatever gods might have some say with respect to hurricanes. Two years ago a pretty nasty one walloped the East Coast during SPEP.

      [Notes:

      *Which is a fun place, if you dutifully consult your Fodor's*** guide. The last Central APA in New Orleans was kind of a depressing affair during the evening talk times. It was a little bit like the hotel in The Shining, symmetrical framing and all.

      **I'm not really a pagan, but hurricanes do kind of bring that out in you. It's not just the kind of waving-with-your-arms-to-get-the-already-released-bowling-ball-to-move type superstition. It's also that every time one misses Baton Rouge, my relief at not being hit myself substantially outweighs my upset for those currently suffering elsewhere. It's not a very Christian attitude. This beign said, anyone but a saint who has lived through one of those things understands the sentiment. Now I'm going to get back to my Voltaire. . .

      ***Not that Fodor, this is SPEP after all.****

      ****As much as I miss discussions of innateness, languages of thought, semantic atomism, anti-evolution, etc. at SPEP, it is a bit of a relief not to have to worry about feeling like a jerk for never laughing whenever various of Fodor's pets and older female family members are jokingly mentioned.]

    • Cool conference on analytical existentialism

      I'm breaking our policy* of not posting calls for papers for three reasons: (1) two friends of the blog are involved in this, (2) the topic concerns things we've blogged about at newapps before, and (3) crossover material is part of this blog's raison d'etre (prounounce that like Joe Bob Briggs would).

      The department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, is pleased to host a workshop on "Analytical Existentialism," October 20–21, 2014
      Keynote: LA Paul (UNC): "Transformative Experiences"

      We welcome abstracts on topics related to Analytical Existentialism, which is the use of an analytical style to investigate topics that matter to us as human beings capable of feelings and anxieties or joys while doing justice to our first-person (even phenomenological) perspective. In particular, we welcome papers that instantiate and theorize Analytical Existentialism (and its history) as well as criticize it. In addition, we welcome papers on transformative experiences from any perspective, including phenomenological and other non-analytical traditions.

       
      Please send abstracts (maximum 500 words) to Eric Schliesser by August 15.
      Cool stuff!
       
      [*The exception who proves the rule!]

    • Yosef Kirman – After The Blockade (A Chronicle)

      Gaza-damage
      Who is the hidden one? The last one here? After the blockade?
      Who, in the violated courtyard, walks around on feathers of torn bedding,
      strewn about,
      Who walks on wrecked crockery and kitchen gear, thrown, broken, of no human use?
      and too on family photographs of those driven from their homes ,pursued
      to be destroyed?
      The armoire is turned round and the person gunned down, lies at the open door,
      but his wife and children, those he loved, still live,
      they were just now brought to the Umschlag Platz,
      and they receive, as promised would be parceled out,
      a two kilo bread for every head-;
      God how long will their lives endure in your care? How long?
      And this tragedy goes on day after day? Day after day?

    • Vico and Nietzsche

      Gary Shaprio raised the issue of the relationship between Nietzsche and Vico in the comment thread of my recent post on Vico (comments 2 and 5), and that is a topic well worth exploring a bit further. I've looked at it in the past in my personal blog, but too far back to bring in thoughts I've had in the last year, which has included some intense study of both Vico's  New Science and Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. I won't get into the exact lines of possible influence, because that really is deep and complicated work on the detail of intellectual history, though also it must be said if not carried out in the right spirit it carries the danger of ignoring the elements of diffusion, convergence, and relayed unconscious influence in the history of philosophy. Or maybe that is just my justification for making big comparisons and not working so much on the details of intellectual transmission. 

      (more…)

    • Types of men that can’t sit still

      1. Leg bouncers – Tend to bounce at a rhythm of around ten times per second, achieved by pressing and releasing the forward part of the metatarsals on the floor while the calcaneus remains consistently raised.
      2. Foot bouncers – Legs are crossed, and the tallus of the raised foot is held still, while the phalanges move side to side at about ten cycles per second.
      3. Thigh massagers – Feet are ususally flat on the floor, and knees move closer together and further apart at a rate of about three times per second.  Each knee moves horizontally about three to five inches each half cycle with the average distance between the knees somewhere between one and a little over two feet, depending on the particular man who can't sit still's style of thigh massage.
      4. Foot rotators – Langorous, veering into laconicity, phalanges make a slow circle at about once per second.
      5. Gum chewers – Styles may vary.

    • Probability in Many Worlds: Is the cart in front of the horse?

      I know a few regular readers of this blog have views about the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.   I want to ask a question about what is supposed to be the response to a basic worry about a whole family of approaches.  (David Wallace's recent book would be an obvious case, but so would Sean Carrol's recent contributions.)

       

      The many worlds interpretation basically says that whenever you make a "meausurement" in QM, (say you have a particle that is spin up in the y direction and you measure spin in the x direction,) the world contintues to evolve according to the Schroedinger equation, and the only thing that makes it look like the measurement has a determinate outcome is that the world splits into two emergent worlds, with an emergent observer in each one.    The trick of all this, of course, is to somehow explain why there is probability when all of the outcomes are occuring.  One problem I have with all of these attempts to get probability out of  is that they all go like this.

      1. Assume decoherence gets you branches in some preferred basis.
      2. Give an argument that the Born rule applied to the amplitudes of these branches yields something worthy of the name ‘probability.’

      The problem is that these steps happen in the reverse order that one would like them to happen.

      (more…)

    • Yisroel Rabon – Pain

      IndexDo you know the pain of women you sometimes see flying
      on carts with bottles of vitriol in fingers that burn?

      Do you know the sorrow of strong wild madmen,
      when hoses of water stream on their bare necks?

      Do you know the hatred to life of people dying
      with a rope on their neck and a bullet in their skull?

      Do you know the grief of children from beds of sin,
      who are found strangled in toilets?

      Do you know the pain of waxen fading lips
      of the dying who no longer have strength to sob?

      Can you fathom the pain of pregnant mothers
      who in their bellies carry dead children?