A "True Detective" Reading List (Article)

“We became too self-aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law.”

- Rust Cohle, True Detective

A list of dark, pessimistic, or even "weird" books fans of the HBO series ought to read.  HERE.

a somewhat dated but very interesting article on the Singularity + Brassier on Land (Mp3 Audio)

HERE.  I had been thinking about this in the context of Accelerationism, having listened to again Ray Brassier's commentary on Nick Land, HERE from the 2010 Goldsmith's Accelerationism event (full event link HERE).

Book Review: Braidotti’s Vital Posthumanism + Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms: Differences and Relations

Pointer to Specular Image blog.  Very interesting article and book review HERE and HERE, apropos the recent Accelerationism craze that's happening (and I think that's a good craze, by the way).

Belong (music)

Music for a Cherry Valley trek today.

Gods and robots: a speculation (Rough Type blog)

"The contemporary robot is a polytheist by design, if not by nature. It sees gods everywhere it looks, and we are they. Never mind the Singularity. The moment we should anticipate with concern is the moment that robots abandon polytheism for monotheism. It is then that robots will begin to conceive of themselves as being made in God’s image, and in their eyes we will be transformed into beasts."

- Nicholas Carr / Rough Type blog

HERE.

the attention economy and "meat capital"

First a link to set the context, HERE.  But read the comments.  "Meat capital" is just so fitting for all of this.  And as Outside In Blog astutely observes, it's worth making your way through the irritation of watching this to really get a sense for the times we live in.

One point: Shing mentions "fragmentation," where the logical consequence seems to be that, inevitably, every human being born will necessarily be born as their own individual "brand" - having their labor capitalized upon in the form of a socially imposed, mandated and continuous self-branding and selling of one's own every thought, hope, dream, desire, or experience (thus "story telling"): whether for attention, for recognition, for societal approval, or for mere survival.

Woe to those who would rather remain human than succumb to social.

Is this the fate of our "posthuman" future?

interesting quote in new issue of Collapse

See what the journal Collapse has to say...

Meillassoux's concept of absolute contingency, prefigured in Peirce's 'tychism', issued a philosophical challenge to the metaphysics of possibility and prediction. Utilising it to move beyond Nassim Taleb's incrimination of statistics' blindness to 'Black Swan' events, Elie Ayache argues that we need to conceptualise a regime of events entirely foreclosed to statistical and probabilistic prevision-the 'Blank Swan'.

From Collapse VIII: Casino Real, HERE. Two articles reference Peirce, it seems.  One by Zalamea and another by Ayache.  I really ought to check out this issue, then, considering HERE and HERE.

Neoreactionary Canon (Anarcho Papist blog)

As Accelerationism in all of its forms leaves behind that "dead elephant in the room" which is Speculative Realism (to use Ben Woodard's apt and recent description)...

I am not sure if Right Accelerationism and NRx are the same or a genus to species relationship...Still, here is a reading list for NRx for those interested.

http://anarchopapist.wordpress.com/neoreactionary-canon/

Theses in tweetform (Rough Type blog)

Interesting, and nearly all are true...

http://www.roughtype.com/?p=4822

Terrance Blake's newest article published!

More congratulations are in order for Terrance Blake, who *just* had his article "L'ontologie Abstractive de Graham Harman: à l’épreuve de la ‘Lettre à Tristan Garcia’ de Mehdi Belhaj Kacem" published in a very reputable French publication covering Medhi Belhaj Kacem.  A prior version of his publication can be found HERE.

This comes on the heels of other noteworthy news (HERE) where Blake has been appointed faculty to the Global Center for Advanced Studies.  Given his publication record, and his academic appointment, it's no surprise that Meillassoux himself has vouched for Blake's translations as "technically precious."

Blake's other writings have garnered attention as well, having upward in the neighborhood of 600+ views on his academia.edu page, HERE.

Abit of unfortunate news HERE isn't surprising, but with the tale his academia.edu page is telling it's time for the opposition to put up or shut up.

#nowheretorun   #nowheretohide

Sellars, Meillassoux and the Myth of the Categorial Given: A Sellarsian Critique of Correlationism and Meillassoux's 'Speculative Materialism'

A very interesting paper:

https://www.academia.edu/7663257/Sellars_Meillassoux_and_the_Myth_of_the_Categorial_Given_A_Sellarsian_Critique_of_Correlationism_and_Meillassouxs_Speculative_Materialism

Isn't it long past time to say "there's just something about Twitter?" (ARTICLE)

This post (HERE) resonated with me.  Quotes?

"Twitter is the id stream of the internet, and suppressing it will only make it worse.  I'm just saying, maybe there are certain aspects of the materiality of Twitter which contribute to these appalling recurrences [bullying]."

"First, clearly, 140 characters makes a difference.  It's supposed to.  The concision demanded by this form lends itself to, among other better things, the formulation of statements in the form of sentiments and platitudes.  It is not a format best suited to rigorous argument, but to the emphatic reiteration of dogma and sentimentality."

"Second, Twitter is a marketing platform, which is designed to foster short-term buzz and hype.  It would be absurd for me to be pious about this aspect of Twitter, since I depend upon it to circulate my writing, and advertise upcoming events.  Still, this has effects.  The whole point of Twitter is that to fully participate in it, one has to get carried away with passing frenzies."

"Finally, this is linked to a sort of panopticon effect, in that everyone is in principle potentially witnessed by, or drawn to the attention of, everyone else on Twitter.  One always wants to be 'retweeted' as much as possible, of course, but that attention can suddenly become toxic if one deviates from the norms of one's Twitter lifeworld.  So there is tremendous pressure - especially for those who basically live on Twitter - to constantly project a self consistent with one's ego-ideal.  But it's absolutely no mystery that this sort of strenuous high-mindedness should go hand-in-hand with a punitive, bullying streak - particularly if there's a chance of, through belabouring the scapegoat of the moment, establishing one's innocence before the invisible tribunal of one's peers."

* "Ten Great Articles About Social Media" HERE

* "The Tweeting Philosopher" HERE

* "If Twitter is fading, what's next?" HERE

* Nick Land's comments on "Eulogy for a Platform" HERE

* "Unlike Us: Social Media Design or Decline?" HERE

* "Netocracy - Slow and Fast Thinking" HERE

Dark Matter Volume II now available

http://darkmatterjournal.com/VolumeTwo.html

Ray Brassier : Sophistry, Suspicion, and Theory (VIDEO)

Talk at the conference "SOPHISTRY - The Powers of the False" at MaMa, Zagreb, June 27-29,2014.

Brassier is currently working on two books: Reasons, Patterns, and Processes: Sellars' Transcendental Naturalism and That Which Is Not, a study of the reality of appearances.

two books by Brandom

 What prompted me to pick up Brandom's Perspectives on Pragmatism and Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas?  

In the vein of Nicholas Rescher, Paul Weiss, and even Charles Hartshorne, it's Brandom's appeal to rationality, logic, and mathematics that all ought to be, he claims, the backbone of philosophy and indeed of metaphysics.

Essentially reason can show philosophy a way forward in way that is nevertheless reasonable; as Brandom recognizes that reason and reason strictly alone is unreasonable.  Thus he invokes normative dimensions of rationality that are fully natural.

As Brandom puts it, "The rationalism that is articulated, motivated, and explored in these pages looks back to Kant and Hegel as its forebears, and to Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz only as their deepest lessons came to be understood within the German idealist tradition....I think Kant and Hegel showed us a way forward for a rationalism that is not objectionably Cartesian, intellectualist, or anti (or super-)naturalist.  (Nor need it treat 'the light of reason' as unacquired or innate.)"

notes on Teleology (with a nod to Nick Land)

Citing Bryce, Land claims that teleology might best be interpreted in terms of equilibrium.  Or, as he writes, "Equilibrium is exactly a telos."  Note that there are 44 comments to his entry.

With Land I couldn't agree more.

It seems that the "allergy" to medieval or Scholastic, and largely Aristotelian, modes of thought propagated by early Enlightenment philosophy has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.  Essentially Land astutely observes that, yes, "equilibrium is the telos of those particular dynamic complex systems governed by homeostasis...Such systems are, indeed, in profound accordance with classical Aristotelian physical teleology, and its tendency is to a state of rest.  This ancient physics, derided by the Enlightenment mechanists in the name of the conservation of momentum, is redeemed through abstraction into the modern conception of equilibrium.  'Rest' is not immobility, but entropy maximization."

I've written about this before, HERE, and HERE.

Latour - “The horrible things that happen on blogs”

While THIS post is mostly about Latour, Deleuze, and their metaphysics' relationship to pragmatism, I thought it interesting that Latour would (finally) comment on the abysmal state of blogging in the speculative blogosphere given his AIME project.

It is truly ironic that Latour calls for diplomacy given the state of negative affect promulgated by self-serving blog kingpins who *love* Latour, but resort to nothing less than intentional, ugly political censorship and online thuggery in order to cut off and dominate corners of their self-labeled (and apparently "branded") "Inc." market.  (Reinforced by snatching up "spots" or by serving as series' editors, etc. etc. in order to enhance some created illusion and sway others to believe that their "Inc." brand exists, or that it still has a following, or that it is the only game in town.  Please.)

The only solution to this - other than the endless, and rather pointless, tit-for-tat "you ignore me and I ignore you" game that has been going on literally since 2011, is to divide not only the speculative blogosphere, but apparently, now, the literal publishing world as well, into hermetically self-sealed bubbles, sections, or feudal corners of the speculative philosophy world where each blissfully yet intentionally ignores the other as a rule rather than exception.  I'm talking no mention in footnotes, endnotes, citations of any kind, bibliographies, nor even by word of mouth.  Show your allegiance by who you willfully omit in your blog posts, your tweets, your facebook posts, and now your publications 'oh speculative philosophers.  You'd think I'm kidding, however sadly I am not.  Such a move was so predictable as it is not below these goons to sacrifice honest scholarly literature reviews for political jabs made in condescension.

Thus, a complete separation and division of worlds - each world proliferating into its own separate mode of willfully ignorant discourse.

In course, then, each feudal corner inhabits its own "la-la land."  Now, that's what I call open and collaborative scholarship.

May the "skirmishes" continue in this scholarship cold war... ad nauseum.