quote of the day

Heidegger on a forest path.

"Nature is present in all that is real. Nature unfolds in human work and in the destiny of peoples, in the stars and in the gods, but also in stones, things that grow, animals, as well as in streams and thunderstorms... [Yet] Nature can never be found somewhere in the midst of the real as simply one more isolated thing. [Nature as] the "all-present" is also never the result of combining isolated real things. Even the totality of what is real is at most but the consequence of the all-present... The "wonderful" [that is Nature] withdraws from all human producing, and nevertheless it flows through everything with its presencing."

- Martin Heidegger [GA 4: 52-53, Commentary on Hölderlin's "As When On a Holiday,"]

Hallstaater Lake, Austria (from cable car). Photo by Niemoczynski, June 2017.

Thanks goes to Keith Hoeller, and also to Richard Capobianco from the Heidegger Circle for emailing me the quote. 

Podcast: "Experiential togetherness through readings of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and Isabelle Stengers" (mp3 audio download)

Dirk (know to many as "dmf") sent along THIS link. Haven't listened to the whole thing yet but will soon. From my guess of it, it appears to cover what process-relational philosophers interested in the likes of Deleuze, Whitehead, etc. would enjoy.

Thanks Dirk!

Call for Papers: Eighth International Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism

Eighth International Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism 

April 6^th & 7^th, 2018

Campus of Drew University, Madison, New Jersey

Theme:

"Nature and the Symbolic in the Human and Non-human"

A central feature of any naturalism is that there is at least some form of continuity between mind and nature – or, that mind "stretches" to meet nature (in the words of John Dewey). But, what is "mind" within a naturalistic register? A basic premise for naturalists such as Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Alfred North Whitehead, or Susanne Langer – naturalists in the American philosophical tradition – is that "mind" is essentially symbolic. This is to say that, conceptually, mind is both expressive and representational. This, though, begs the question: what within nature might be able to "think?" As any "ecstatic" naturalism seeks to explore nature's deeply embedded transformational potential, the theme of this year's congress questions nature's potential for "mind" – or "intelligence" - and questions how that mind might be at work within the natural world, especially as expressed by means of symbol. What precisely is nature's potential for expressive intelligence and how is it expressed through symbol and concept? And further, what other than the human might be able to "think?" What does it mean to think? Can machines think? Can forests think? Insects? Birds? Fish? Transcending beyond the boundaries of the human, we seek papers that wish to explore especially non-human modes of intelligence within the realm of the symbolic in order to connect naturalism to applied philosophical fields, whether animal ethics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence, political ecology, biosemiotics, and so on. Papers need not be exclusively about the philosophy of ecstatic naturalism but are encouraged to at least minimally address its perspective before moving on to present a different thesis of the paper so as to place all papers of the congress within the stream of contemporary philosophical naturalism.

Submissions of abstracts 300-500 words in length should be emailed to: niemoczynskil@moravian.edu no later than October 31^st, 2017. Authors of accepted papers will be contacted no later than November 30^th with a paper deadline (no more than 15-20 minutes in length of reading or 6-8 pages double-spaced) of March 1st.

How our attention is harvested

Lengthy article/review which goes into detail regarding the neuro-livestock addicted to their iPhones, mostly through a discussion of Facebook - although Twitter is as much to blame in that users are essentially performing free labor for the benefit of the platform they use.

YouTube is just as guilty of this as well. In my research in (possibly) starting a YouTube channel I discovered that its bad news for YouTube if those who create content actually end up with a profit. Unless views directly translates to traffic to one's own business then the only money to be made is through ads, most of which pay pennies on the dollar. Full-time YouTubers barely make anything, contrary to popular belief.

What this all boils down to is an attention-economy where content-creators are the cybercattle and the platform the slaughterhouse. If one creates content they must always do so with the masses in mind, and the platforms ensure that this is the way it must be for it suits their business model, not those who create the content.

As Instagram is the new "thing," it appears that every few years the masses migrate from one platform to the next. Myspace to Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to... and so on. The whole "trending" thing and idea of mass viral influence disgusts me. I'd rather be a black sheep than some lab-rat addicted to my smartphone tapping and scrolling my life away.

Anyway, the review is quite long - but do read if you can find the time to do so.

Article HERE.

Ontologies of Nature: Continental Perspectives and Environmental Reorientations (new book)

New book discussing various ontologies of nature from a Continental environmental philosophical perspective, which is a new (and good, I think) trend in Continental scholarship.

This volume contains essays that offer both historical and contemporary views of nature, as seen through a hermeneutic, deconstructive, and phenomenological lens. It reaches back to Ancient Greek conceptions of physis in Homer and Empedocles, encompasses 13th century Zen master Dōgen, and extends to include 21st Century Continental Thought. By providing ontologies of nature from the perspective of the history of philosophy and of contemporary philosophy alike, the book shows that such perspectives need to be seen in dialogue with each other in order to offer a deeper and more comprehensive philosophy of nature. The value of the historical accounts discussed lies in discerning the conceptual problems that contribute to the dominant thinking underpinning our ecological predicament, as well as in providing helpful resources for thinking innovatively through current problems, thus recasting the past to allow for a future yet to be imagined. The book also discusses contemporary continental thinkers who are more critically aware of the dominant anthropocentric and instrumental view of nature, and who provide substantial guidance for a sensible, innovative “ontology of nature” suited for an ecology of the future. Overall, the ontologies of nature discerned in this volume are not merely of theoretical interest, but strategically serve to suspend anthropocentrism and spark ethical and political reorientation in the context of our current ecological predicament. - Editors: Kuperus, Gerard, Oele, Marjolein (Eds.)

Link HERE.

Spotlight on Carbondale: Illinois Town Sits at Solar Eclipse 'Crossroads'

My Ph.D. alma mater SIUC makes the news.
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Spotlight on Carbondale: Illinois Town Sits at Solar Eclipse 'Crossroads'
// Space.com

By pure cosmic coincidence, the town of Carbondale has found itself at the center of eclipse mania.
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SPEP 2017 full program

The 56th annual meeting of SPEP: Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, held at the University of Memphis, Oct. 19-21, 2017. Full program in .pdf format for download, HERE.

Pluto - An Ode to (New Horizons Mission)

quote of the day

"Logic is the backbone of philosophy. And nothing is quite clear logically unless it can be put mathematically. Ideally at least, a philosopher should be a mathematician and logician as well as metaphysician. Perhaps this could be said of Plato, certainly of Leibniz, Peirce, and Whitehead."

- Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis & Philosophic Method

Mathematics is Metaphysics: Zalamea in translation:

A statement in favor of synthetic thought, Zalamea's metaphysics is one whose backbone is mathematics. I picked up his Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics and as a non-specialist in the philosophy of mathematics (yet still holding an interest) I must say it is a very good and very clear book. THIS article is its summarizing statement.

North American Schelling Society website updated

It's abit clunky, although you can sign up for emailed updates. Apparently they are launching a journal called Kabiri (I wish the journal had a much better name), which looks like will be an online open-access journal. On the website one can also find a fairly extensive bibliography of Schelling scholarship in English, but it looks like an embedded data-base of some sort and is very, very slow. Like I said, the website is clunky and s-l-o-w.

This year's NASS conference (the fifth annual meeting) will take place at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City from February 21-25. Its theme is "Schelling: Crisis and Critique."

Link to the updated website HERE.