Robert Brandom: From German Idealism to American Pragmatism, and Back (MP3 and VIDEO downloads)

Credit to University of Cambridge: Pragmatism Workshop, 2012.

Format	Quality	Bitrate	Size
MPEG-4 Video *	640x360	1.84 Mbits/sec	1.37 GB	View	DOWNLOAD
Flash Video	484x272	567.82 kbits/sec	421.78 MB	View	DOWNLOAD
iPod Video	480x270	505.29 kbits/sec	375.39 MB	View	DOWNLOAD
MP3	44100 Hz	125.0 kbits/sec	92.73 MB	Listen	DOWNLOAD

CFP: C.S. Peirce International Philosophy Congress

CFP: C.S. Peirce International Philosophy Congress

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PANEL PROPOSALS

The Charles S. Peirce International Centennial Congress
Invigorating Philosophy for the 21st Century

July 16-19, 2014

University of Massachusetts Lowell

The Charles S. Peirce Society and the Peirce Foundation cordially invite the submission of new papers and panel proposals for the Charles S. Peirce International Centennial Congress, to be held at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The theme of the Congress is Invigorating Philosophy for the 21st Century. The aim of this conference is to advance scholarship on all aspects of Peirce’s philosophy and biography, and on the influence and contemporary relevance of his thought. Interdisciplinary submissions, and contributions from researchers in disciplines other than philosophy, are welcome.

I. GENERAL GUIDELINES AND PROCEDURES

A. Method of Submission: All submissions must be sent as email attachments to

PeirceCongress2014@gmail.com

The subject line of the email should be whichever of the following applies:

            Centennial paper submission from [insert your name]

            Centennial panel submission from [insert your name]

It will greatly facilitate the work of the Program Committee if you use this exact wording and replace the blank with your name.

B. File Format: All files submitted must be in .doc, .docx or .rtf format. They must be double-spaced, with no headers or footers (except for pagination), and use Times New Roman 12 point font.

C. Confirmation: All persons making submissions with the appropriate subject line information will receive confirmation of receipt of their submission within one week of the submission deadline. If you have not received such confirmation by that date (and are sure that the confirmation email did not wind up in your spam folder) please email an inquiry to PeirceCongress2014@gmail.com.

D. Number of Submissions: Individuals may submit at most two (full-length, 3000-word) papers, and only one panel proposal, for review. Please note that no one will be allowed to present more than one full-length paper, or to participate in more than one panel, at the Congress unless the Program Committee finds that an exception is warranted.

E. Anonymity: Papers and panel proposals must be suitable for anonymous review.  Please refrain from making references to your own work, your location, or anything obvious that could reveal your identity.  If the author’s identity can be determined through self-references, endnotes, etc., the submission may be disqualified.

F. Publication Possibilities: The Publications Committee for the Congress does not plan to publish a volume of proceedings. Instead the Committee will be selecting papers of enduring scholarly value for publication in themed anthologies or themed issues of journals. If your paper is accepted for presentation at the Congress, it will be considered for publication unless you indicate at the time of submission that you do not wish it to be. Only those papers that are complete at the time of submission will be considered for publication.

II. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: PAPERS

A. Papers will be presented by their authors during contributed paper sessions. Each such session will comprise two papers and will run for a total of 90 minutes: 25 minutes of presentation time, and 20 minutes of discussion, per paper.

B. Length: Papers should be no longer than 3000 words; longer papers will not be reviewed.

C. Deadline:  1 September 2013. This is a firm deadline: no paper submissions will be accepted if they carry a time stamp later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on that date.

D. Submissions must include two (separate) files, attached to an email (see §I.A above):

(1)   A file set up for anonymous review, entitled “Paper Submission”, which must include

a.       the paper title

b.      an abstract (100-150 words)

c.       keywords

d.      word count

e.       the text of the paper (not to exceed 3000 words)

(2)   A file entitled “Author Information,” which must include

a.       the paper title

b.      author name and (if applicable) institutional affiliation

c.       author contact information (telephone number, email address and postal mailing address)

d.      anticipated audiovisual equipment needs

If you do not want your paper to be considered for publication (see §I.F), please indicate that in the “Author Information” file.

E. Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: Authors will be notified by email of the Program Committee’s decision by 31 December 2013.

III. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: PANELS

A. Panels are 90 minute, open format, sessions. Panel organizers are free to propose any format (including the format described above in §II.A) that is appropriate to the objectives for their panel. There must be at least two contributors, and their contributions must be consistent with the general guidelines on number of submissions (§I.D), and with the length requirement stated below. All contributors must have confirmed their participation to the panel organizer before submission.

B. Length: Length of the papers will depend on the panel format, but may not exceed 3000 words. It is the responsibility of the panel organizer to ensure that all planned activities can be completed within 90 minutes. If your proposed format does not allow at least 30 minutes for discussion, please include a justification for this in your proposal.

C. Deadline:  1 February 2013. This is a firm deadline: no panel submissions will be accepted if they carry a time stamp later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on that date.

D. Submissions must include two (separate) files, attached to an email (see §I.A above):

(1)   A file set up for anonymous review, entitled “Panel Submission”, which must include

a.       the panel title

b.      an abstract for the panel (450-600 words) explaining: the topic of the panel; its relevance to the Congress; how the proposed contributions jointly advance the discussion of the panel topic; and the proposed format of the panel

c.       an abstract (450-600 words) for each contribution to the panel

(2)   A file (one file for the whole panel, not separate files for the several contributors) entitled “Contributor Information,” which must include

a.       the panel title

b.      the name of the panel organizer, with institutional affiliation (if applicable) and contact information (telephone number, email address, and postal mailing address)

c.       for each contribution: author name, title of contribution, institutional affiliation (if applicable) and contact information (telephone number, email address, and postal mailing address)

d.      anticipated audiovisual equipment needs for the panel

Notification of Acceptance/Rejection and Final Submission of Panels: Panel organizers will be notified of the Program Committee’s decision by 1 May 2013. At that time the organizer will also receive instructions for the final submission of their panel. The details of those instructions may vary depending upon the format of the panel; for panels following the format of contributed paper sessions (§II.A), final versions of the papers to be presented must be included in the final submission. The deadline for final submission of panels is. 1 September 2013. This is a firm deadline.

IV. CONTACT INFORMATION

All correspondence related to the Congress program should be sent to

PeirceCongress2014@gmail.com

If exceptional circumstances make it necessary to communicate directly with one or both of the Program Committee Co-Chairs, they can be reached by email at the following addresses:

Rosa Mayorga (rmayorga@mdc.edu)

Matthew Moore (matthewm@brooklyn.cuny.edu)

When emailing the Co-Chairs at the latter two addresses please indicate clearly in the subject line that the topic of your message is the Peirce Centennial Congress.

Faber reviews Stengers' 'Thinking with Whitehead'

HT Adam/Knowledge Ecology.  Link HERE.  Here is the best part of the review, but note that I was making the same criticism about a year ago when my review of the book was published.

As with several other of these newer approaches, one of the (unfortunate) fault-lines of Stengers’ endeavor is that, when its sources remain hidden, it contradicts the Whiteheadian spirit of recollection, rediscovery and synthesis in ever new concrescences. Originality (creativity) must not suppress the traditions on which it stands; in particular, a hundred years of Whiteheadian scholarship in process theology that is left in silence. It is sad that a rediscovery of Whitehead should narrow the creative synthesis down by being dominated by such a negative prehension. Granted that from afar one might not see the inner diversity and rich potential of process theology's rhizomatic development, but to think that to name "God" (anew) in (Whitehead's) philosophy today is original when it in fact rehearses positions process theology has developed over the last century still leaves me with a question: Is freedom from the past necessarily coupled with its oblivion?

summer solstice - view of Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania

iain hamilton grant - "introduction to the philosophy of hegel" (MP3 download)

Download mp3 HERE.  Good write-up on Zizek's lecture following Grant's presentation, HERE.

Meillassoux: The new civil religion will be "Catholic rather than Protestant in spirit.”

An interesting phrase, quoted from a review posted on AUFS. Link HERE.

more on transcendental ontology

Despite the fashionable Hegel hate and ripping on idealism, you'll see me reading this book.  Gabriel is no slouch in the intellectual department either, a very smart guy.

Transcendental Ontology in German Idealism: Schelling and Hegel sheds remarkable light on a question central to post-Kantian philosophy: after the Copernican Revolution in philosophy, what can philosophy say about the world or reality as such? What remains of ontology's task after Kant? This is a question often overlooked in contemporary scholarship on German Idealism.

Markus Gabriel offers a refreshing reinvigoration of a range of questions concerning scepticism, corporeality, freedom, the question of being, the absolute and the modal status of our determinations and judgments, all crucial to our understanding of the truly radical nature of post-Kantian philosophy. Gabriel's assessment of the experiments undertaken in post-Kantian ontology reaffirms Schelling's and Hegel's place at the heart of contemporary metaphysics. The book shows how far we still have to go in mining the thought of Hegel and Schelling and how exciting, as a result, we can expect twenty-first century philosophy to be.

iain hamilton grant on transcendence and transcendental philosophy

Grant sets the record straight HERE. 

the deep transcendence of objects

Agent Swarm (new blog to me, seems pretty good so far) has these two interesting posts.

"Objects do not 'withdraw', they 'transcend'" - very good write-up.

[O]bjects do not withdraw, they transcend. They transcend our perception and our knowledge, they transcend all relations and interactions. As Harman reiterates, objects are deep (“objects are deeper than their appearance to the human mind but also deeper than their relations to one another”, p4, “the real table is a genuine reality deeper than any theoretical or practical encounter with it…deeper than any relations in which it might become involved”, p9-10). This “depth” is a key part of Harman’s ontology, which is not flat at all, but centered on this vertical dimension of depth and transcendence.

I do not believe that individuals, in their own density, are not "deeper than their relations to one another."  The depth had by individuals is equal - equal in the sense that each and every individual is infinitely deep, infinitely dense, in an ontological sort of freedom and potential.

And, On an Inconsistent Kantianism - chronicles "post-badiousian" philosophers Garcia and Meillassoux.  The conversation continues.

Ravaisson/Negarestani/Schelling

Reblogging this from Naught Thought ...

Ravaisson begins to close Of Habit writing:

“Between the ultimate depths of nature and the highest point of reflective freedom, there are an infinite number of degrees of measuring the development of one and the same power, and as one rises through them, extension – the condition of knowledge – increases with the distinction and the interval of the opposites. This is like a spiral whose principle resides in the depths of nature, and yet which ultimately flourishes in consciousness” (77)

A few lines down he continues: “The history of Habit represents the return of Freedom to Nature, or rather the invasion of the domain of freedom by natural spontaneity” (Ibid).

Here it is impossible to avoid the Schellingian resonances. In the First Outline Schelling writes: “Now, it would certainly be impossible to get a glimpse of the internal construction of Nature if an invasion of Nature were not possible through freedom” (FO, 196).

Where Nature invades us through habit for Ravaisson, for Schelling we invade nature through experiment. Furthermore, it is interesting that Ravaisson breaks the efficacy of intuition in a way that Grant wants to do in Schelling (contra Andrew Bowie). As Brassier pointed out in the original Speculative Realism conference (C3, 310) Grant is faced with either supporting a naturalist epistemology which grossly asserts that the brain is a truth engine or in idealizing objects or actualizing ideal relations (via Hegel). That Ravaisson reads freedom as natural spontaneity also opposes Markus Gabriel’s reading of Schelling’s freedom as a freedom within the bounds of objective idealism. That is, Gabriel argues that for Schelling (unlike Hegel) reflection is limited but not because of nature’s spontaneity but because of the contextuality of discerning a logical space (a plane) from which to reflect.

What the tension between Ravaisson and Schelling and Brassier’s comment points out is the that there is always the problem of the ground and the two series – that is the experiment is a question posed to nature which already cuts off and assumes a non-productive nature – ie the experiment is the ideal (a priori assumptions) using the actual (natur naturata) to find out something about nature in itself (natura naturans) or the real. The term ‘real’ is tricky here because Schelling would say that nature as nature would be beyond both the real and the ideal, and could only be thought in metaphysical terms, of an originary strife or tension.

In his Notes on the Figure of the Cyclone Negarestani writes:

“The ovum of reality is the eternal or the universal. The universal is that in which all partake, but it is eternally irreducible to commonalities and affordances between all particular instances, collections of multitudes, and local horizons of thought. It is neither bound in its local expressions, nor is it exhaustible by any collection of multitudes; it is simply free from the necessity of all its particular instances. The universal is a sign free of meaning and significance, the so-called free sign of Peirce that ramifies into its local contexts according to its global contingency, its bottomlessness and uninterruptable continuity with itself. For naturphilosophie, by virtue of its intensionality and self-reflexivity, the universal is identified as the eternal. The eternal – understood semio-logically by Peirce – is a modal plenum, an abyss replete with modalities that can neither be reduced to the totality of infinite possibilities nor determined in the first or the last instance by discrete actualities (marks of difference, cosmological horizons, local conditions of life and thought, etc.)” (Leper Creatvity, 287).

From the speculative naturphilosophical point and from Ravaisson’s actualized view we seem to gaze downward into the abyss (of forces). For Schelling and Ravaisson it would seem that these perceptions (whether bodily mediated or speculatively mediated) don’t contract matter or sense to make objects out of them but improperly translate them (via a sign) to a second order, to reflection or representation. But this translation is over a basal continuity or unprethinkable identity where thought access is indirect and not expressive of virtuality or becoming, nor does it speak to the development of spirit or mind but speaks to the breadth of nature which appears in the cyclone as a torrent.

speculative naturalism