Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[smcder]

Nor is it even clear why this supposedly runs counter to the spirit of the natural sciences. It is quite conceivable that some future physics might find merit in a concept of indirect causation; far weirder things have happened. But that’s not even the point.

The point is that philosophy has a different subject matter from natural science, that neither was born to be the handmaid of the other, and that philosophy’s job is to follow its own findings wherever they may lead, not to limp along after the known textbook science that is generally a bit behind the cutting edge anyway.

To give just one example, if Leibniz’s metaphysics had merely limped along after the natural science of his day, we would never have had his relativist doctrine of time and space.

He simply would have been reduced to flattering Newton if not even earlier figures. It’s important to respect science and draw inspiration from it. It would be appalling, however, to turn philosophy into its voluntary handmaid. No good reason has ever been given for doing so. In authors such as Ladyman and Ross, for instance, it is merely asserted. I’ve already published an article on that book, and that article can already be read, in Society and Space.

science
philosophy
handmaidens
Zuhandigmagdenkeit

 

[smcder]

The question, however, is how the world differs from our interactions with it while we are still alive and dealing with it. If you don’t think there is any such in-itself beyond human access, then you have to make the case. You can’t simply rely on an unthematized metaphysics of immanence, or a deep desire that direct knowledge of the world be possible in order to be able to tell alchemists and Christians to shut up. We’ll never be in a good position to tell people to shut up, I’m afraid.

That’s not the sort of knowledge we have at our disposal, nor does it seem especially desirable to tell other people to stop talking; we never know what good ideas might come even from false premises.

But this doesn’t entail a free-for-all of relativism. It simply means our criteria of truth have to be much subtler than the notion that one type of person –the scientist, the epistemologist– stands before the naked in-itself and that all others must bow reverentially before this priestly ability. Scientific practice looks nothing in real life like it does according to this ideology. Latour, among others, has done a nice job of showing why not

 

[smcder]

These guys are a lot of fun ... what happens when people find out philosophy can be fun ... ?

ECOLOGY WITHOUT NATURE: Withdrawal Is Not Spatial or Material or Temporal

 

[Constance]

I linked this book from the page you just linked, mainly for the cover (but the book looks interesting). The iceberg, as I'm sure I've said before, is often considered to be a visual match for the amount of information {how I dislike that word} contained in the subconscious relative to the conscious mind.

Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities) - Kindle edition by Timothy Morton. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

 

[Constance]

Re Morton's book and Harman's outlook in general, I think it's good for us to think in terms of our own species' temporality, recognizing the persistence of things way beyond us and into the full extent of the planet's past.

 

[smcder]

I linked this book from the page you just linked, mainly for the cover (but the book looks interesting). The iceberg, as I'm sure I've said before, is often considered to be a visual match for the amount of information {how I dislike that word} contained in the subconscious relative to the conscious mind.

Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities) - Kindle edition by Timothy Morton. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

I was just looking at that ... all of these movements have so much energy ... part of it is what you can do with graphics, but I'm sure there is a long history of graphics and underground press, etc - in philosophy ... captures some of the energy and excitement of previous philosophical revolutions ... lots of stereotypical French imagery does come to mind:

 

[Constance]

Thinking about your rabbit I'm reminded of this early poem by Stevens about a rabbit's sense of the world and itself. It even has a green mind in it. It definitely belongs here.

Wallace Stevens
A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts

The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur.

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten on the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone.
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

 

[smcder]

Re Morton's book and Harman's outlook in general, I think it's good for us to think in terms of our own species' temporality, recognizing the persistence of things way beyond us and into the full extent of the planet's past.

I was reading about wilderness ontology -

the practice of wilderness ontology involves experiencing oneself as a being amongst, rather than above, other beings.

In generalizing the agential alterity of being as a foundational ontological principle, Bryant posits three theses:

first, wilderness ontology signals the absence of ontological hierarchy, such that all forms of being exist on equal footing with one another.

Second, wilderness ontology rejects the topological bifurcation of nature and culture into discrete domains, instead holding that cultural assemblages are only one possible set of relations into which nonhuman entities may enter in the wilderness.

Third, wilderness ontology extends agency to all entities, human and nonhuman, rather than casting nonhuman entities as passive recipients of human meaning projection

So I now think about all the things out there and in here (tapping myself on the chest and head)

Resisting the traditional notion of wilderness that views civilization (the "inside" world of social relations, language, and norms) as separate from wilderness (the "outside" world of plants, animals, and nature), wilderness ontology argues that "wilderness" contains all forms of being, including civilization

That are doing things ... that are up to something

 

[Constance]

I was just looking at that ... all of these movements have so much energy ... part of it is what you can do with graphics, but I'm sure there is a long history of graphics and underground press, etc - in philosophy ... captures some of the energy and excitement of previous philosophical revolutions ... lots of stereotypical French imagery does come to mind:

Jean-Paul Belmondo. Something characteristic about the French, and he expresses it. A strong sense of personal rights and independence in thinking. They know how to be free. I like to think of Sartre and Beauvoir listening to Django Reinhardt and Stefan Grappelli at Le Hot Club Jazz in Paris. They might have been there the night some of these performances were recorded:

 

[smcder]

Jean-Paul Belmondo. Something characteristic about the French, and he expresses it. A strong sense of personal rights and independence in thinking. They know how to be free. I like to think of Sartre and Beauvoir listening to Django Reinhardt and Stefan Grappelli at Le Hot Club Jazz in Paris. They might have been there the night some of these performances were recorded:

Yes, he is an icon ...

Le Samourai with Alain Delon is one of my favorites, playing the character "Jef Costello" in a very French take on gangster movies ...

for humor, it is Jacques Tati of course ... have you seen Tati's films?

I have always heard Jerry Lewis was very popular in France, considered a comic genius ... I didn't see it until I watched the Martin and Lewis show ... they are both comic geniuses, Martin far more subtle and of course he was a good actor, but his timing was superb and they were brilliant together with a Vaudeville background ... and Lewis was years ahead of his time - he had to be a big influence on Jim Carrey, I don't care for Carrey, but Lewis did anticipate his humor by decades ...

What's easier to see is the popularity of Charles Bronson "le sacre monstre" in good comparison with Belmondo
and Delon

 

[smcder]

But tell me ...



where did this guy come from??

 

[Soupie]

From the OOO wiki entry. Pretty wild.

"
oupling Heidegger's tool-analysis with the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl, Harman introduces two types of objects: real objects and sensual objects. Real objects are objects that withdraw from all experience, whereas sensual objects are those that exist only in experience.[27] Additionally, Harman suggests two kinds of qualities: sensual qualities, or those found in experience, and real qualities, which are accessed through intellectual probing.[28] Pairing sensual and real objects and qualities yields the following framework:

• Sensual Object/Sensual Qualities: Sensual objects are present, but enmeshed within a "mist of accidental features and profiles."[29]
• Sensual Object/Real Qualities: The structure of conscious phenomena are forged from eidetic, or experientially interpretive, qualities intuited intellectually.[30]
• Real Object/Sensual Qualities: As in the tool-analysis, a withdrawn object is translated into sensual apprehension via a "surface" accessed by thought and/or action.[31]
• Real Object/Real Qualities: This pairing grounds the capacity of real objects to differ from one another, without collapsing into indefinite substrata.[32]

To explain how withdrawn objects make contact with and relate to one another, Harman submits the theory of vicarious causation, whereby two hypothetical entities meet in the interior of a third entity, existing side-by-side until something occurs to prompt interaction.[33]Harman compares this idea to the classical notion of formal causation, in which forms do not directly touch, but influence one another in a common space "from which all are partly absent." Causation, says Harman, is always vicarious, asymmetrical, and buffered:"

 

[Constance]

But tell me ...



where did this guy come from??

Is it Gerard Depardieu (or something like that)? If so, he's a wonderful, lovable comic actor. I haven't seen films with Tati; will look out for one or two. I remember Alain Delon and had heard the French love Jerry Lewis. My favorite French film is The 400 Blows. Truffaut, I think.

 

[Constance]

ps, I don't like Jim Carrey either. I think he is an alien.

 

[Pharoah]

Surely being and time is an elaborate hoax?

 

[smcder]

Germany's answer to all this testosterone?

Is it Gerard Depardieu (or something like that)? If so, he's a wonderful, lovable comic actor. I haven't seen films with Tati; will look out for one or two. I remember Alain Delon and had heard the French love Jerry Lewis. My favorite French film is The 400 Blows. Truffaut, I think.

Haven't seen 400 Blows - yes, by Trufaut though ... Tati is wonderful and Depardieu - yes! He is very lovable, "Green Card" - an American film with he and Andie McDowell is a lot of fun.

Tati only made I think five films, so you can't go wrong with any of them - Monsieur Hulot's Vacation or Mon Oncle is probably the "best" ... but Playtime is extraordinary ....

 

[smcder]

From the OOO wiki entry. Pretty wild.

"
oupling Heidegger's tool-analysis with the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl, Harman introduces two types of objects: real objects and sensual objects. Real objects are objects that withdraw from all experience, whereas sensual objects are those that exist only in experience.[27] Additionally, Harman suggests two kinds of qualities: sensual qualities, or those found in experience, and real qualities, which are accessed through intellectual probing.[28] Pairing sensual and real objects and qualities yields the following framework:

• Sensual Object/Sensual Qualities: Sensual objects are present, but enmeshed within a "mist of accidental features and profiles."[29]
• Sensual Object/Real Qualities: The structure of conscious phenomena are forged from eidetic, or experientially interpretive, qualities intuited intellectually.[30]
• Real Object/Sensual Qualities: As in the tool-analysis, a withdrawn object is translated into sensual apprehension via a "surface" accessed by thought and/or action.[31]
• Real Object/Real Qualities: This pairing grounds the capacity of real objects to differ from one another, without collapsing into indefinite substrata.[32]

To explain how withdrawn objects make contact with and relate to one another, Harman submits the theory of vicarious causation, whereby two hypothetical entities meet in the interior of a third entity, existing side-by-side until something occurs to prompt interaction.[33]Harman compares this idea to the classical notion of formal causation, in which forms do not directly touch, but influence one another in a common space "from which all are partly absent." Causation, says Harman, is always vicarious, asymmetrical, and buffered:"

Ooo ... it is wild. Not sure what/how to make of it ... I am watching Zizek's Pervert's Guide to Ideology where he appears in various movie sets and shows the underlying ideology ...

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I also don't know what to make of it, but it's fascinating and very different. These various new philosophies break open for me what it means to think, to do philosophy, I'm not sure they resonate with me or if that's important.

 

[smcder]

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is worth watching ... he takes various films

They Live
Taxi Driver
Titanic
Jaws
Triumph of the Will
The Eternal Jew
Fall of Berlin
Full Metal Jacket
The Dark Knight

and many more and looks at the underlying ideology - right now he is talkinng about the Dark Knight and the "noble fable" of Plato ... that politicians are cynical and know the truth but tell this noble fable to the people so they will have faith in the system.

NOTE disturbing content

 

[Constance]

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is worth watching ... he takes various films

They Live
Taxi Driver
Titanic
Jaws
Triumph of the Will
The Eternal Jew
Fall of Berlin
Full Metal Jacket
The Dark Knight

and many more and looks at the underlying ideology - right now he is talkinng about the Dark Knight and the "noble fable" of Plato ... that politicians are cynical and know the truth but tell this noble fable to the people so they will have faith in the system.

NOTE disturbing content

This one I've gotta watch. Have heard very good things about Zizek.

 

[smcder]

This one I've gotta watch. Have heard very good things about Zizek.

It's the second part ... but stands alone ... first film is Pervert's Guide to Cinema. Let me know what you think. Zizek has some other films out too ... Zizek! notably and lots on You Tube, you can pretty much watch Ideology on Youtube, one piece at a time.