From Social Media Critique to Organized Networks: Stiegler and Lovink (VIDEO)

Cold Cave - "Our Tears Help the Flowers Grow" (LIVE)

Gianni Vattimo - The Philosopher's Zone (MP3 AUDIO)

Ht Dmf.  Link HERE.

Objective Ecological Value

Interesting post at Enemy Industry blog, HERE.

quote of the day

"We must become nothing, we must go down to the vegetative level; it is then that God becomes bread. "

- Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

HT Paroikein & P.E.S.T

quote of the day

“I possess a sense of divine transcendence from the Catholic tradition balanced by a pagan appreciation of the mystery of nature itself, the sensuous being-there of the world in its sometimes unbearable beauty.”

- William Desmond, Perplexity and Ultimacy

Fr. Barron comments on Who God Is and Who God Is Not

ecstatic naturalism 2014

 Fourth International Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism: 
Call for Papers

The Institute for Ecstatic Naturalism (Orpheus) is issuing a call for papers for the Fourth International Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism to be held at Drew University on April 11th and 12th, 2014. The theme for this year's Congress is Nature and Psyche although papers on other topics pertinent to ecstatic naturalism will be considered. The deadline for submission of a 500 word abstract is January 15th. Final selections will be made on February 11th.

***

 Ecstatic Naturalism is a philosophical perspective that argues that nature is all that there is and that the domains of the sacred are in and of nature. More particularly, nature is fissured into the great divide between nature naturing (natura naturans) and nature natured (natura naturata). Nature naturing is defined as “nature perennially creating itself from out of itself alone,” while nature natured is defined as the “innumerable orders of the world.” From this primal ontological distinction or division all else flows. 

   The inaugural text for this movement is Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism, (Fordham University Press, 1992), by Robert S. Corrington. The most recent books in this philosophical trajectory are: Nature's Sublime, by Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Primal Self, by Nam T. Nguyen, Charles Sanders Peirce: A Religious Metaphysics of Nature, by Leon Niemoczynski, Fearsome Entrancing, by Guy Woodward, Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Psychological Biography, by Joseph Kramp, and Naturalism’s Philosophy of the Sacred, by Martin O. Yalcin. 

 The plenary speaker for this year’s Congress will be Professor John J. Thatamanil from Union Seminary in New York City, author of The Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament—An East-West Conversation (Fortress Press).

 Please send your abstract to: Leon Niemoczynski at lniemocz [insert sign here] mail.immaculata.edu 

 ***

The Institute for Ecstatic Naturalism, 12 Campus Drive, Drew University, Madison, NJ 07940

 Executive Director - Robert S. Corrington 

Institute Board - Kevin Boileau, Rose Ellen Dunn, Sigridur Gudmarsdottir, Nancy Howell, Chae Young Kim, Robert C. Neville, Elaine Padilla, Nicholas Wernicki 

netocracy: slow and fast thinking

HT Terry from Agent Swarm blog.  He's pointed me in the direction of two posts about "slow thinking" and the absolute need for time, covering Badiou and Deleuze.  See Recollecting Philosophy blog's posts "Slow-thinking and the absolute need for time" HERE and "Internet Revolution, attentionalism and slow-thinking, Bard and Bourdieu" HERE.

I'd like to post a link to the tag "Deleuze" HERE over at Recollecting Philosophy blog as well, due to the fact that I have a "Deleuze and Theology" reading group coming up in December. Might be a useful resource.

New Study Suggests Crabs Can Feel Pain After All

And thus on Bentham's, Singer's, Rachel's analyses, crabs belong to the moral community. These creatures' pain is no less important than a human being's. Clearly crabs value "not feeling pain" by choosing to avoid it. Subjective experience of pain and memory of the negative experience of pain are present, according to this study.

Let us examine Justus Buchler's concept of ontological parity applied to the realm of value here. It is ignorance to say that value or importance is simply a "human construct," as crabs clearly find importance in avoiding pain - there is a basic value in it *for them* regardless of human judgement. As with any basic emotion experienced by animals, what makes creatures equal is the univocal fact of value (contrasts of positive and negative aesthetic value: whether through sensation or intensity) experienced by those creatures. In other words, a sense of value or importance makes for the subject of a life in the aesthetic contrasts of value felt by that life.

If Buchler's ordinal metaphysics is applied to animal ethics suddenly value theory and ecology take on new meanings.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/author/korenm/

"Noble Spacemen, Sacrificing All for Science"

"Claustrophobic and stylish, Europa Report is a slow-burning thriller that puts the science back into science fiction."

NY Times reviews the movie HERE.  Currently on Netflix and other than being a gorgeous film to watch, it's fun and incredibly realistic.

Hägglund (and others) in NYC

Karen Barad (University of California at Santa Cruz,), Elizabeth Grosz (Duke), Martin Hägglund (Yale), and Michael Naas (De Paul) will be delivering Keynotes at the 4th Annual Derrida Today conference, May 28-31 at Fordham University in NYC.

For more information, the conference website is HERE.

Irreducible relationality and infinite density: quote of the day and a thought or two

"A new creation in which the inner and outer realms are united, and the interior depths of inwardness are identical with the exterior and outer depths of every other. 

Thomas J.J. Altizer - The Descent into Hell

This quote was taken from Matthew McCraken's blog about radical theology.  On his blog THIS post in particular had me thinking (again) about the metaphysics of individuation: specifically about the concept of relations and their necessity, as well as about how - following Adam Kotsko to some degree (see quote below) - individuals, centers of experience, are "nodal" in the sense that each center is "infinitely deep" in terms of the potential that actuates those centers. Yet, in being self-actuating, individuals, centerpoints of experience, singulars etc. etc. are *related* by the fact that all require that potential in order to *be* individuals. In other words, through that potential - a generic category of freedom; indeed, a relational universal, individuals are capable of their self actuation.

A significant part of this actuation is semiotic communicative expression by way of feeling, sensation, emotion, or empathy - as well as temporal future self-creation.  In the end we have a relation of self to other, self to self, and other to other (thus my interest in the Altizer quote).  

"The world is a network of physical and spiritual relationships of which humanity forms a nodal point. The world is not somethinggiven or static, but continually arises out of the interactions among thesingularities that make it up."

Adam Kotsko - The Politics of Redemption

When it comes to articulating the *nature* of singulars and how they express but also partake in relations, I believe that it is not just about articulating an environmental aesthetic construed strictly in terms of sensation or materiality.  What we need is an environmental aesthetic ground in what I call an "ecological metaphysics," one that takes aesthetics, and more specifically the expression of the aesthetic into consideration.  This is to say that information also comes into play in discussion of what it means to be an individual.

The material aesthetic expression of singulars is semiotic in the sense that semiosis accounts for agents (singulars that act through potential, ontological freedom), their relations, and the expressions of those agents in and through relations.  Stated differently, an environmental aesthetic, one that is truly ecological, must account for the information produced by agents, their relations, and their various conjunctive and disjunctive syntheses that make for a natural semiotic.  This semiotic exists, or better "subsists," within an ecological network, and indeed, in part constitutes it.  Therefore, as much as aesthetics understood traditionally contributes to our understanding of metaphysics in the most general sense, semiotics understood within the realm of an "ecological metaphysics" is an invaluable tool as well.  Knit with aesthetics this ecology produces biosemiotics if "bio" refers to the living sensate empirical world in its most radical and broad sense (Jamesian and Whiteheadian empiricism). Afterall, what *doesn't* self-communicate?

What this boils down to is that relations are irreducible and that an environmental aesthetic, if it is to be thoroughly ecological, must account for relations and the natural semiotic that goes with them.

See these posts from some time back:

"The deep transcendence of objects"

"Infinite density and aesthetics"

"In defense of relations"

"Do animals grieve"

"Biosemiotics"

"Living Systems"

"what I'm reading" - lists

I'll be posting "what I'm reading" lists from time to time in efforts to personalize my blog abit more.  I am envisioning that these lists will cover things I'm reading, things I am thinking about reading or paging through, research that happens to be on my desk, and things I've recently finished.

Currently reading
Ecologies of the Moving Image - Adrian Ivakhiv
Dark Green Religion - Bron Taylor
Hegel: Theologian of the Spirit - ed. Peter Hodgson

Just finished
Hegel's God - William Desmond
Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics - William Desmond

On my desk: research
"Intensive filation and demonic alliance" - Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Human-Environment Relations: Transformative Values in Theory and Practice - Brady/Phemister
Deleuze and Theology - Christopher Ben Simpson
Theology After Deleuze - Kristien Justaert
Deleuze Beyond Badiou - Clayton Crockett
A System of Pragmatic Idealism (Vol 3): The Validity of Values - Nicholas Rescher
Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation - Henry Hall

For fun
Symbiotic Planet - Lynn Margulis
The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene - ed. Hahn/Auxier
Animal Theology - Andrew Linzey
Trees of Pennsylvania Field Guide - Stan Tekiela

incredibly accurate review in Parrhesia

HERE. This review pretty much nails it.