The episode of this week in the web-series Dominguinhos+ has an unbelievably beautiful version of ‘Lamento Sertanejo’, one of Dominguinhos’ classics (also famous in the Gilberto Gil version). It is an amazing collaboration between singer Mayra Andrade, mandolinist Hamilton de Holanda, and guitarist Yamandu Costa, two of the most talented musicians currently in activity in Brazil. Dominguinhos’ accordion itself is not heard here, but the virtuosity of the two musicians combined with Mayra Andrade’s limpid voice is an absolute killer.
recent posts
- Foucault, Hyppolite and Marx (part 9): Alienation and Historicity in Logic and Existence
- Foucault, Hyppolite and Marx (part 8): The Marx of Logic and Existence
- Foucault, Hyppolite and Marx (part 7): Hegel via Heidegger
- Foucault, Hyppolite and Marx (part 6): Logic and Existence, Nature and Subject
- Foucault, Hyppolite and Marx (part 5): Alienation and Dictatorship
about
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At the Chronicle here.*
Kripal argues that we don't have more empirical evidence for extra-sensory kinds of perception, because such perceptions usually involve trauma, often the death of a loved one. And of course we can't replicate these things in a laboratory. Two of his examples are Mark Twain and Swedenborg, the first involving a kind of mental telepathy where Twain vividly dreamed about his brother's death a week before it happened, in his dream getting a lot of odd details correct. Interestingly, Kant made fun of Swedenborg in his published works, but in a private letter to a friend, actually accepted one of the stories of his clairvoyance.
Even though nearly every philosopher I know is too naturalistically minded to take these things very seriously, I don't find Kripal's claims implausible. As he notes, for just about any interesting physical property we have to do a lot of violence to matter to be able to figure out what's going on.
One of the best books I've read recently is Rod Dreher's The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, which recounts his sister's dying from lung cancer and his decision to move back home to Saint Francisville, LA in the wake of her death. He describes a few numinous moments of the sort Twain worried about, and their depiction is both moving and plausible.
[*You have to hurridly scroll down to get past their irritating little box with job adds that constantly scroll in and out before it drives you nuts, or you can fight the good fight and nuke it with a firefox add-on like this.]
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With a provocative title such as this, it is easy to imagine how the rest of the story will go. Philosophy, one will read, no longer has an effective role to play in society. One could perhaps draw on the authority of Stephen Hawking and argue, as Hawking does, that philosophy is dead and serves no purpose for it is now physics that best provides the answers to the questions that were once the focus of philosophers. The title may also lead one to anticipate the economic argument where philosophy is portrayed as being one of the most useless of the humanities degrees with the subsequent encouragement that one pursue, for the sake of their professional future, a more economically viable degree.
If either of these arguments are what the “philosophy has no future” title intends, then there are counter-arguments at the ready. With respect to the first, there is plenty of room to argue, as many have (see Laurie Paul’s essay for example), that the physics Hawking encourages presupposes a metaphysics that leaves plenty of opportunity for traditional philosophical questions to gain traction and in turn foster cooperative engagement between philosophy and science (Roberta’s excellent post along with Eric’s post on dark matter are cases in point of just such cooperation). There is also plenty of evidence to challenge the common assumption that philosophy is not a good degree to pursue in order to get a lucrative job upon graduation. Far from being a hindrance to future economic success, philosophy majors on the whole earn more than graduates with other degrees (see this story [h/t Catarina]). Philosophy majors also outperform students from other majors when it comes to standardized tests – e.g., LSAT, GRE (see this).
These counter-arguments are persuasive and as far as I’m concerned definitively undermine the two assumptions that may appear to motivate the title of this post. These assumptions, however, are not what motivated the title. What motivated it instead is not the notion that philosophy has no future because it has been displaced by competing forces that have now taken over the future that philosophy could once claim, but rather that the very attitude that philosophy ought to have such a future is itself derivative of a philosophy that has no future.
I would propose defending, to state the thesis more directly, a contemporary reworking of Camus’ philosophy of the absurd.
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I have been thinking about an analogy to the Bechdel test for philosophy papers – this in the light of recent observations that women get fewer citations even if they publish in the "top" general philosophy journals (see also here). To briefly recall: a movie passes the Bechdel test if (1) there are at least 2 women in it, (2) they talk to each other, (3) about something other than a man.
A paper passes the philosophy Bechdel test if
- It cites at least two female authors
- At least one of these citations engages seriously with a female author's work (not just "but see" [followed by a long list of citations])
- At least one of the female authors is not cited because she discusses a man (thanks to David Chalmers for suggesting #3).
The usual cautionary notes about the Bechdel test apply here too. A paper that doesn't meet these standards is not necessarily deliberately overlooking women's work (it could be ultra-short, it might be on a highly specialized topic that has no female authors in the field – is this common?), but on the whole, it seems like a good rule of thumb to make sure women authors in one's field are not implicitly overlooked when citing.
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Next Saturday, the University of Leuven is hosting an outreach event called Philosophy Festival ("Feest van de Filosofie"). This year's theme is people & technology ("mens & techniek"). I was asked to join a panel discussion on the technological singularity. The introduction will be given by a computer engineer (Philip Dutré, Leuven). There will be a philosopher of technology (Peter-Paul Verbeek, Twente) and a philosopher of probability (me, Groningen); and the moderator is a philosopher, too (Filip Mattens, Leuven). So far, I have not worked on this topic, although it does combine a number of my interests: materials science, philosophy of science, and science fiction.
The idea of a technological singularity (often associated with Ray Kurzweil) originates from the observation that the rate of technological innovations seems to be speeding up. Extrapolating these past and current trends suggests that there may be a point in the future at which systems that have been built by humans (software, robots, …) will become more intelligent than humans. This is called the technological singularity. Moreover, once there are systems that are able to develop systems that are more intelligent than systems of the previous generation, there may be an intelligence explosion. The possibilities of later generations of such systems are inconceivable to humans. (This theme has been explored in many science fiction stories, including the robot stories by Isaac Asimov (1950's and later), the television series "Battlestar Galactica" (2004-2009), and the movie "Her" (2013).)
Even this brief introduction gives us plenty of opportunity for reflection on concepts (What is intelligence?) and consequences (What will happen to humans in a post-singularity world?). I am planning to analyze a very basic assumption, by raising the following question: When are we justified to pick a particular trend that has been observed in the past (e.g., Moore's observation of an exponential increase in the number of transistors on commercial chips) and extrapolate it into the future? Viewed in this way, the current topic is an example of the general problem of induction.
The hypothesis "The observed trend will continue to hold" is only one among many. Let me offer two alternative hypotheses:
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I came across this gem today, Nirvana covering Terry Jacks in Brazil:
I think they had to trade instruments to keep just a smidgeon of ironic distance from the schmaltzyness of the original. This kind of necessity is the curse of my generation.
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Really fine review of the movie (filmed on the LSU campus) at Psychology Today here, with a number of comparisons between the film and that one Rocky film where Stallone wins the Cold War, including this:
If you recall, the Russian boxer Drago trains in a state of the art scientific facility, where they measure the impact of his punches, train him on machines and try to figure out how to make him a better fighter. Meanwhile Rocky runs out in the snow and lifts logs. God’s not Dead is very similar. The reiteration of Hawking’s statement that philosophy is dead was not accidental. It is something that the conservative evangelicals who made this movie desperately want to be true. In the real world, Hawking’s statement was met with condemnation from both scientists and philosophers,* and philosophy is so alive and well today that the Christian right-wing feels they need a movie to demonize it. But this is a part of a larger anti-intellectual movement in evangelical Christianity that distrusts what academics say on everything from American history to evolution.
The end of Johnston's piece is a little bit unfortunate.
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There are a number of, er, hairy stories over at the Daily Mousse worth checking out today.
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Given the recent guest post on this issue, some of us thought it appropriate to post a link to this statement, written by three APA members with disabilities, on the APA’s practices with regard to members with disabilities. I (and the other bloggers I have communicated with) take no stand on this, and merely pass it along.
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The much anticipated appointments page at PhilJobs is now live (see this announcement from the APA). To encourage the use of this service, we will be suspending the hiring thread on NewAPPS. I want to commend this effort by the APA, David Bourget, and David Chalmers, which will certainly be a helpful addition to the profession.
New APPS 