upcoming talks and other information

I am currently preparing my paper, "Speculating God: On Whitehead and Meillassoux" to be read at EN 2012.

My second major paper of the year (thinking 2012 already!) considers ecology and empathy - and that will be read in Thailand at Assumption University, Bangkok. [Update: this talk was postponed until summer of 2013.]

I have one book review coming out in May, and then during January I plan to write another review that should hopefully be out sometime over the summer. Also in January (or May) there will be a review of my Peirce book coming out in American Journal of Theology and Philosophy.

At EN 2012 there will be a book discussion panel dedicated to my Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature (the other half of the panel will go to Nam Nguyen's excellent Nature's Primal Self).  

SIU talk round-up

My SIU paper went well.  Thanks especially to Charles for putting me up for two days, to Bruce, Myron, and Rebecca for the fantastic conversation, and to the doctoral students for their great questions.

By talking with Bruce for awhile I was so happy to engage in productive conversation.  In a matter of a few hours and over two dinners, Bruce, Charles and I hammered out some great ideas.  My own "speculative naturalism" took shape in ways that I was hoping it would, chiseled out by Bruce's great questions and comments. 

By the end of the evening we felt like we all accomplished something, and for that I am so grateful to Bruce and Charles both.   

SIU campus (during invited talk)

why Brassier is both right and wrong

After re-reading some of Nihil Unbound, I began to ask myself if perhaps Brassier may be mistaken concerning he notion of a "dead" form of Being which can, one day in the distant future, take on a finalized state "at the close of the universe," what is called "Being with zero degree" (a main thesis of his book).  

When it comes to some of Brassier's more critical comments concerning the majority of the "speculative realist" blogosphere I think he is generally correct.  But I think he might be incorrect on the topic of Being with zero degree as a final state or ultimate end in death of sorts.

To hit just one high point.  Being with zero degree, to my mind, cannot be a state where reality dies to the extent that Brassier says it would.  If I take our (physical) universe to be the only reality, then that spells the sort of trouble and doom that Brassier says, true.  However, it occurred to me that 1.) a multiverse theory, if true (and according to contemporary physics it likely is) would prove Brassier's cosmological thesis of being with zero degree as a dead state to be incorrect  and 2.) being with zero degree, rather than a dead state, could be a generative state of "bare nothingness," to use the phrase from both Peirce and Schelling.

In fact, Peirce even speaks of the "logic" of zero Being as a creative state, not a cold and dead one that admits of no furtherance ontologically or cosmologically (see CP IV and V).  And, along with Whitehead, if there are cosmic epochs, then wouldn't it be too "optimistic" to try to claim that our physical universe is the one that happens to get the honor of getting darkened out of existence forever with no others to arise from it?  In short, does the death of the universe presuppose and absolute end?

Caputo on Meillassoux Reading Group - Post 6

Final lecture on AF.  A good discussion about  justice, especially in light of radical contingency.  Speculative thinking and the virtual God play a major role here.  Audio for download is HERE.

Assignment for next week is to read "Spectral Dilemma," followed by the essay "Potentiality and Virtuality," and then finally, "Immanence of the World Beyond."  See reading pack for details.

The Unity of Being - another forthcoming Hartshorne book

And another forthcoming Hartshorne title - The Unity of Being, this time a re-constructed and edited version of his doctoral dissertation.  Copying the description below.

The Unity of Being - Charles Hartshorne 

Edited by Randall E. Auxier and Hyatt Carter

Charles Hartshorne was the most influential proponent of the process conception of God. While often seen as a disciple of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Sanders Peirce, Hartshorne's ideas are in many ways original and often depart significantly from those of Whitehead and Peirce. The Unity of Being is the only major work written by Hartshorne before coming under the influence of Whitehead and Peirce and has never been accessible to the public until now.

Born in rural Pennsylvania in 1897, Charles Hartshorne became a world-class philosopher of religion whose ideas about the nature of God are still being examined and debated today. He was an especially prolific writer in his eighth and ninth decades and was even active as a centenarian. Having published 22 books between 1922 and 1997, and in the wake of his death in 2000, Hartshorne is now becoming understood as one of the few philosophers whose work bridges theology and academic philosophy.

Hartshorne’s distinctive contribution was to combine Whitehead’s process metaphysics with theology, resulting in a conception of God not as a static entity but as a dynamic process. Traditionally, God is seen as an unchanging, perfect being. But Hartshorne showed that God can be understood better as always becoming, changing, and growing in ways that can be rationally understood.

Hartshorne’s distinctive work has also been credited with recovering and improving St. Anselm’s traditional ‘ontological argument’ and for reviving a version of natural theology in which God’s nature and existence cannot be understood apart from the world of nature.

Randall Auxier and Hyatt Carter have carefully edited and Hartshorne’s Harvard Ph.D. dissertation of the same title. The Unity of Being will add an important piece to Hartshorne’s intellectual legacy. The Unity of Being will provide historians with insight into the origin of Hartshorne’s ideas and the trajectory of his career, and help better illuminate Hartshorne’s relationships to Whitehead and other important influences in his career, notably the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.

Meillassoux and Whitehead

Two great posts on speculative philosophy and incarnationalism via Meillassoux and Whitehead (note: the topic of my paper for EN 2012) and another on Whitehead and the divine function.  Matt always has something productive to say in his mini-treatises.  I appreciate that.

Object and divine function

I have recently come across a good blog post on 13.7 about evolution, novelty, and emergence that reminds me of Meillassoux's Hyperchaos; in the sense that the Hyperchaos, being necessarily radically contingent, may serve as a mode of *empowerment* for objects within an ecological nexus by permitting the forming of "adjacent possible empty niches"(and so the Hyperchaos thus becomes another element in my system, possibly the third and final along with object and function).  

In the context of the article, which I copy in part below, ecology and theology continue to intertwine more tightly, as I see it.  The best line, I think, is this:  "We are enabled, but do not know what we enable."  It really captures that sense of Meillassouxian radical contingency, as it does that sense of Whiteheadian creative advance and novelty, both applicable to ecology and theology.  Note too in the post a link to another good 13.7 post on "enablement and radical emergence."

"The Worlds We Mutually Make"

Credit: 13.7, link HERE

Is all that happens in the universe logically entailed by means of Newton's mode of reason? Do differential equations of motion, initial conditions, boundary conditions, followed by integration — that is deduction, entailment — define our lives? ...

Darwin had part of the answer in his theory of evolution by natural selection. The winners will win. But selection acts at the level of the "whole" organism. Recall Kant said, roughly, that "In an Organized being the parts exist for and by means of the whole and the whole for and by means of the parts." Organisms, cells and us, are Kantian wholes. Selection operates at the level of the Kantian wholes.

Then the question is this: How do we Kantian wholes make — co-create — our worlds together? Stunningly, the evolving biosphere, without any selection at all, makes new "adjacent possible empty niches" — such as the swim bladder, evolved by Darwinian pre-adaptation from the lungs of lung fish. The swim bladders can become a new niche, a new possible direction of evolution. Worms may evolve to live in them. But, no selection acted to create these new niches. Stunningly, the biosphere actually creates its own future possibilities of becoming! This "enablement and radical emergence" is our co-creation of our worlds.

We live far from pure entailment. Because we cannot know even what can happen in the evolution of the biosphere, economy and cultural evolution, we live beyond command and control of nature and ourselves. We are enabled, but do not know what we enable.

What will we wisely do with this empowerment that knows not its consequences?

Can Our Brains Tell Us What Is Real?

"Can Our Brains Tell Us What Is Real?"

Credit: 13.7, link HERE;  See also: Singularity.

Our senses only capture a sliver of what truly goes on around us. Trillions of neutrinos racing all the way from the heart of the Sun zip across our bodies each second; electromagnetic waves of all sorts, microwaves, radio waves, infrared, carry information we don't capture with our eyes; sounds beyond the range of our ears go unheard; dust and bacteria go unseen. Our instruments and tools greatly extend our view, whether of the very small or of the very large.

Still, any technology has limits, even if these limits change in time. As a consequence, large portions of the world will always remain unseen. What we know depends on what we can measure and detect. Who, then, can legitimately claim to have a true sense of reality? The individual who perceives reality only through his/her senses? Or the one who amplifies his/her perception through the use of instrumentation?

Caputo on Meillassoux Reading Group - Post 5

Interlude - as we finish Chpt 4: Hume's Problem and Chpt 5: Ptolemy's Revenge in AF, let's take a listen to John Caputo's *final lecture* before his retirement.  In this lecture Caputo discusses the future of Continental philosophy:  Audio HERE. 

Next week we'll begin looking at Meillassoux and (process) theism, continuing to listen to Caputo's lectures on the subject.  And so we'll begin with our reading pack next week by taking a look at Meillassoux's "Spectral Dilemma," followed by his essay on potentiality and virtuality, and then finally, "Immanence of the World Beyond."

More next week, so stay tuned.

on suffering and the culture of death

“To be placed on the cross in Christ, to be lifted up on the cross in Christ, is to be set at the pinnacle of human possibilities.”