‘All there is today is a lack of the All.’ (John Milbank)

Centre of Theology and Philosophy with John Milbank.

----
'All there is today is a lack of the All.'
// CENTRE of THEOLOGY and PHILOSOPH...

John James Audubon, "Ruby-throated Humming Bird" from Birds of America: http://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america

 

John Milbank's essay, 'The All: A philosophico-political polemic' is now available to read online at The Immanent Frame, as part of their special project 'Is this all there is'.

 

Ethics of the Umwelt

Morten Tønnessen has posted an interesting paper (book chapter, it appears to be) on his academia.edu page. Below is the abstract and then the link.

"Umwelt Ethics"

In this paper I will sketch an Umwelt ethics, i.e., an ethics that rests heavily on fundamental features of Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory. In the course of an interpretation of the Umwelt theory, a number of concepts are introduced. These include ontological niche, common-Umwelt, total Umwelt and bio-ontological monad. I then present an Uexküllian reading of the deep ecology platform. It is suggested that loss of biodiversity, considered as a physio-phenomenal entity, is the most crucial aspect of the ecological crisis,which can be understood as an ontological crisis.

Link HERE.

Bergson and Phenomenology (NDPR Review)

Michael R. Kelly (ed.), Bergson and Phenomenology, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 277pp., $85.00, ISBN 9780230202382.

Reviewed by Alexandre Lefebvre, The University of Sydney

A special kind of unhappiness marks Henri Bergson's relationship to phenomenology: that of being dismissed by a tradition that has largely absorbed him. This is, at least, how Merleau-Ponty put it in late in his career:

If we had been careful readers of Bergson, and if more thought had been given to him, we would have been drawn to a much more concrete philosophy… . It is quite certain that Bergson, had we read him carefully, would have taught us things that ten or fifteen years later we believed to be discoveries made by the philosophy of existence itself.

Thus, to show the contemporary relevance of Bergson for phenomenology, a different strategy is required than, say, rehabilitation (which would be necessary in analytical philosophy) or introduction (which would be the case in political philosophy). Instead, dialogue is called for to stage an encounter which has, in a sense, continually taken place and been consistently avoided. The virtue of Michael R. Kelly's volume is not only to have reconstructed debates between Bergson and classical phenomenologists but, more importantly, to propose a Bergsonian contribution to such central phenomenological topics as subjectivity, time, embodiment, nothingness, life, and freedom.

Full review HERE, academia.edu page version of the review HERE.

Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" video (Vimeo)

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge from Raf on Vimeo.

Twelth Biennial Personalist Seminar: C.S PEIRCE AND ROBERT CORRINGTON JULY 24-28 Western Carolina University

TWELTH BIENNIAL PERSONALIST SEMINAR:

C.S PEIRCE AND ROBERT CORRINGTON

JULY 24-28

Western Carolina University

      

Program

About 15-25 participants

Program Structure

The program will center around the Ecstatic Naturalism of Robert Corrington and the thought of C.S. Peirce, with separate days devoted to different aspects of their work. The first day will introduce the group to Ecstatic Naturalism and Peirce and the background in their contexts. These discussions will be led by Robert S. Corrington, Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Philosophical Theology at Drew University and Douglas Anderson, Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of North Texas. The remaining days each participant will be responsible for a specific text and/or aspect, or present a paper on Corrington’s thought and/or Pierce and will help lead that part of the discussion.

Proposals

Submit a title and brief (no more than one page) summary of your interest in the seminar’s subjects.  Accepted projects will receive between 60 and 90 minutes for presentation and discussion of the finished projects. Proposals should be sent to:Dr. James McLachlanjmclachla@email.wcu.edu

Due Date:  June 15

Location

The seminar will be held on the campus of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Cullowhee is located approximately 50 miles west of Asheville and sits near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Appalachian Trail, Blue Ridge Parkway, and several national forests which make up some of the largest wilderness areas in the Eastern United States.

Lodging & Meals

Affordable on-campus accommodations are available in Madison Hall (the site of the meeting). These are standard residence hall rooms, but all have a private bath. Linen packets are included. On-campus stays include breakfasts and lunches Monday through Friday.  Dinner is on your own.

Costs
Single Occupancy w/ meals = $308
Double Occupancy w/ meals = $258

To REGISTER

REGISTER ONLINE NOW

Off campus lodging is available in area hotels.

Conference Registration

The conference registration fee is $50 (Paid separately).

For further information, contact Dr. James M. McLachlan, Dept. of Philosophy and Religion, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723. Phone 828-227-3940 or email jmclachla@wcu.edu

For questions about registration or accommodations contact Bobby Hensley, Associate Director of Continuing Education, at 828-227-7397 or email hensley@wcu.edu

Quote of the day

"In the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent."

- Ambrose Bierce

Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism - Call for Papers for Journal and Conference

"Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism"

Naturalism has been described as the dominant worldview of contemporary philosophy. It is variously defined as the rejection of supernatural entities, as the view that the method of philosophy does not (or must not) differ from the method of natural science, and as the epistemological claim that science offers all the knowledge that is humanly possible. Despite its wide acceptance, in recent years a loose chorus of critics of naturalism has emerged. Many of them associate theirwork with the tradition of transcendental philosophy, i.e., the manner of philosophizing inaugurated by Immanuel Kant and recast creatively by a variety of leading philosophers of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Critics of naturalism from the transcendental philosophical camp broadly construed typically claim that normativity cannot be reduced to natural causality, that consciousness as condition of access to the world is not a natural fact in the world, that the validity of knowledge rests on a priori truths, i.e., truths that are not empirical in nature. Yet some philosophers identifying themselves with the transcendental tradition have expressed sympathy to naturalistic views. Early on thinkers such as Fries, Herbart, Bona Mayer, Helmholtz, and Riehl tried to connect Kantian claims about a priori knowledge with considerations about human psychology and with the deliverances of natural science. Similarly, early-day pragmatists, such as C. S. Peirce, held Kant’s philosophy in great esteem but advocated a fundamentally naturalistic view on the relationship between philosophy and science. Among the largely anti-naturalistic Neo-Kantians, members of the so-called Marburg school (Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer) held that, while there is a difference between philosophy and science, there is a thoroughgoing continuity between both. Nowadays, the landscape is even more diverse. While it is customary to associate naturalism with analytic and antinaturalism with Continental philosophy, despite the intrinsic vagueness of these labels, one can find naturalistically-minded thinkers, such as Evan Thompson, within the ranks of phenomenology (which founder Edmund Husserl unambiguously declared a form of transcendental philosophy hostile to naturalism),and anti-naturalists, such as Thomas Nagel, among the ranks of analytically trained philosophers. Hence, the relationship between transcendental philosophy and naturalism is still a contentious issue, both historically and systematically.
The conference will also serve to launch a new philosophical journal, called Journal of Transcendental Philosophy (De Gruyter, 2019, edited by Andrea Staiti, Sebastian Luft, and Konstantin Pollok) whose first issue will host a selection of papers from the conference.

Please, send an abstract (max. 500 words) or a full-blown paper (max. 3,000 words) for sessions of 30 minutes presentation plus 15 minutes Q&A no later than February, 15th 2018 (by midnight). The language of the conference will be English. parma.transcendental@gmail.com

HERE. A full .pdf file of the call for papers is HERE. The conference is May 18th, 2018.

Gilles Deleuze (SEP entry update)

SEP entry updated on Deleuze. Link and description below.
----
Gilles Deleuze
// Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Gilles Deleuze (January 18, 1925 - November 4, 1995) was one of the most influential and prolific French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. Deleuze conceived of philosophy as the production of concepts, and he characterized himself as a "pure metaphysician."
----

On Neorationalism (Deontologistics)

Wolfendale on neorationalism, below. 

----
On Neorationalism
// Deontologistics

So, the word 'neorationalism' is not one I coined, but it's consistently been used to describe the work of Ray Brassier, Reza Negarestani, and myself, along with numerous fellow travellers. It's nothing something we've ever defined as such, precisely because it's not a moniker we ever consciously picked. However, today I'm reminded of the implicit commitment that might be taken to distinguish neorationalism from its opponents, if it can be said to be anything like a consistent philosophical program. It's this:

 

To reject all rational intuition in the name of reason, to insist that not only is there no intuitive faculty of rational knowledge, but that there is no intuitive purchase on reason's own structure, possibilities, and limits. Reason is not what you think it is. Reason is not rationalisation. Reason is not reasonable.

What distinguishes neorationalists isn't just this principled commitment, but our practical response to it. Our main departure from the classical rationalism of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, is a fidelity to the computational turn begun at the beginning of the 20th century, and whose consequences we are still working out; consequences which land blow after blow on our intuitive conception of what thinking is, breaking our ways of rationalising what we are, and shattering our illusions regarding what it's reasonable to believe.

 

Reasoning is something that is done, and it's something that can be done by processes other than us, processes that can and have been studied using reason, with the unforgiving precision of mathematical proof. Russell's paradox and Gödel's theorems lie at the beginning of an ongoing process through which we demonstrate reason's own limits, and then, following Turing, use these limits as purchase to pull it out of our hominid skulls and realise it in new and stranger forms. We haven't yet created artificial rational agents, only fragments thereof, but the humanist hubris that refuses to see these processes as fragments of things like us, looks increasingly desperate, increasing willing to rationalise away the advance of mathematical logic, the progress of artificial intelligence, and the encroach of computational neuroscience.

 

If you think that you can't be studied as an information processing system, and that this allows you to wall off your intuitive conceptions of not just the human condition but what is good in this condition, then I'm afraid there's an oncoming wave that will crest those walls and drown your parochial ambitions. The promise made by neorationalism isn't that this wave is empirical science come to show you the horrors or your neuronal substrate, but that it's mathematical science come to show you the wonders of your computational soul. We are non-terminating processes interacting with our environment and with one another, exploring the mathematical and empirical realms together, playing games of proof and refutation, and building systems and models that are beginning to encompass ourselves. We are beautiful. We are free. Computational self-consciousness will only enhance this, even if it changes our understanding of what it means.

----

Umwelt (Aeon video)

Aeon video rendering the ideas of Jakob von Uexküll through the film technique of Yoshiyuki Katayama.

----
Umwelt
// Aeon

A term introduced by the Baltic German biologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909, Umwelt refers to an organism's internal and limited perceptual experience of the external world. This stunning experimental exploration of the concept from the Japanese artist Yoshiyuki Katayama contrasts flowers blooming at time-lapse speeds with insects and spiders atop them, captured in real time. As these two organisms move at what appear to be similar speeds, the viewer is reminded of the disparate timescales on which they usually operate, and the very different evolutionary goals that they pursue even as they interact with one another.

By Aeon Video
Watch at Aeon

----

A possible theory of art inspired by Plato's Ion (Aesthetics Today)

Interesting post on Plato's aesthetics.

----
A possible theory of art inspired by Plato's Ion
// Aesthetics Today

Could Plato have been suggesting the following theory of art in his Ion?  What follows is a possible theory of art inspired by Plato, although not necessarily his own.

For something to be art (in, for example, the Kantian sense of "fine art" which is to say, art of genius) it must be:

1.  Inspired. 

2.  Contain something god-like as the source of inspiration.  [The source of inspiration might not be an actual god but rather some person or thing, for example other art, that takes one out of oneself, that causes ecstasy.  This thing may be god-like not only in this but in that it has created a world.]

3.  The artist must be taken out of himself, must create in ecstasy.

4.  The artist enters into a fictional world (as Ion, a rhapsode, enters into the world of Homer) and, for example, feels emotions appropriate to that world. [This is part of what is meant by being out of one's senses.]

5.  The artist, in entering into another world, sees our world (or aspects of it) in a transformed way:  i.e. he/she takes elements from our world and gives them heightened significance (for example, the poet sees water as milk and honey).  In this way or sense the artist him or herself is "holy," i.e. god-like. 

6.   The artist breaks down the gap between human existence and the natural world in some way.  For example in seeing the creek as milk and honey the artist humanizes it, i.e. makes it more intimate.

7.  The artist recognizes the limitations of his/her self knowledge:  i.e. achieves a kind of Socratic wisdom.  This would involve recognition of those realms in which he or she does not have expertise, for example being a charioteer.  [This condition is not stated or even implied by Socrates.  Socrates, as a character makes a very strict distinction between knowledge based art and the arts of inspiration.  But Plato as the writer of this drama may be suggesting this in the end.]

8.   The artist does have a field of expertise.  For example Ion is able to imitate characters in Homer and knows how to influence audiences just as a doctor is able to influence a patient. [Socrates probably would not have subscribed to this.  But it makes sense.  Surely Plato was not unaware of this possibility, much as he disapproved of the actual influence of artists.]

  
----